• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 13, 2012

Keeping the focus on discovery, Google has released a new Google TV YouTube app. 

Available through the Android Market, the app is designed to surface the videos people are most interested in, CNet reports. “To accomplish that goal, the app includes new channel pages, featuring playlists and videos users can subscribe to.” 

“You can now see related videos and other videos by the same users by pressing up and down keys on your remote,” notes Mashable. “You can also interact with the video by voting it up, commenting on it or adding it to your playlist.” 

“The most important addition to Google TV's YouTube app is a feature called Discover,” CNet adds. “After booting up Discover, users can sift through channels with different topics, including comedy, gaming, and news.”

“The new app looks good, and this certainly stands to improve the YouTube experience on Google TV, though it’s certainly not the ‘big announcement’ that many were hoping for,” writes TechCrunch.

No, “It probably won’t change the world as we know it,” writes AllThingsD. Yet, considered in the context of Google larger TV efforts, it deserves notice as “it may actually do a nice job of melding ‘TV’ with ‘Web video’ and blurring some of those distinctions.” 

To that end, “Google is reportedly spending upwards of $100 million on its original content plans, which include shows by well-known personalities like skateboarder Tony Hawk, comedian Rainn Wilson, and self-hulp guru Deepak Chopra,” VentureBeat reminds us.

YouTube also recently announced a significant expansion of its original channels, promising "something for everyone, whether you're a mom, a comedy fan, a sports nut, a music lover or a pop-culture maven,” The Guardian recalls.

Yet, “Google is continuing to improve Google TV, but small updates and improvements like this probably won't be enough to convince users to start buying more smart TV's,”Softpedia cautions.