For Broadcast May 27, 2010

Google’s initiative could do for TV what its search engine did online.

Last week, the world’s largest search engine revealed a major new ambition - to turn the goggle box into the Google box.

Google wants to make both online and television content findable, searchable and deliverable on your TV, and to bring convergence to a new level - something that both Microsoft and Apple have failed to do.

Making the Google TV announcement last week, the big boss, Eric Schmidt, was flanked by representatives from the likes of Sony Corp, Intel, retailer Best Buy, flash video giant Adobe Systems and Dish Network, a satellite pay-TV operator in the US.

Conspicuously absent were any broadcasters, professional content makers or cable TV operators - probably because they were still trying to work out if this new move makes Google a friend or a foe.

Google TV software will be offered in TV sets, games consoles, new DVD players and set-top boxes from this autumn in the US, and it will surely be a force to be reckoned with. The worry for broadcasters accustomed to working in the walled garden of TV channels is the sudden influx of weeds, in the shape of internet content like YouTube videos.

But the TV industry is not sitting still. Sky Player, already available online and on the Xbox games console, last week launched on connected set-top boxes produced by IP Vision, and Virgin Media is working with PVR-functionality provider Tivo to create a better set-top box.

Many other viewing devices have an internet connection and companies from Yahoo! to Five are creating TV widgets that allow you to view their online content on your big TV screen. And, among other things, Project Canvas is an attempt to give connected TVs a familiar navigation tool, in this case an EPG, to ensure that programmes from UK broadcasters don’t get lost in the hubbub that is the internet.

But the problem for the legacy TV business is Google TV’s business model. Before Google, the internet was difficult to navigate and very difficult to monetise. Google changed all that and in so doing made search advertising a big, big thing.

In the UK, online ad revenue - more than 60% of it search advertising - is now bigger than TV ad revenue. Google clearly hopes to expand its ability to sell advertising in the connected TV world.

Certainly the company will have a very complete view of how Google TV consumers are viewing and using both online and TV content, throwing down the gauntlet to TV data providers such as Nielsen and BARB.

On the net, search is global and (unless you are in China), you can get anything, regardless of what country it is from.

OK, so the global simulcast of the last episodes of ABC’s Lost suggests TV is coming closer to becoming truly international, but there is much in the TV world that is about making money territory by territory.

Google knows no geographic boundaries and there is a real possibility that, in some form, search might replace EPGs. TV companies had better learn to adapt - and fast.