The Goggle Box January 9, 2008

For the past couple of years I’ve been banging on to anyone that will listen that Google will own the future of TV.  Not from a content point of view, but a ‘programme search’ and tailored advertising point of view.  Well, they’ve made the first move here it would appear.  It’s interesting that the assumption is that Google wants to shove ‘internet content’ into our sitting rooms.  I think this is fundamentally wrong – I believe they’ll make it easier to find stuff that’s already on TV (and of course elsewhere too).  Don’t think internet, think content and advertising – then I think it begins to make a great deal of sense.

I anticipate seeing the Google interface when I switch on my TV, so that I can search for stuff I want to watch.  It will check what related programmes are on now, in the future (so I can tell the box to record them), what’s available on-demand (free or paid), what I’ve Sky+ed, what I have in my digital/DVD/video collection… even user-generated content.  Sponsored content – which would be contextual, dayparted, connected to the rest of my life and even linked to searches I’d made earlier in the day via Google at work – would be clearly differentiated from real content.  And the ads in between programmes would be similarly tailored to my life/needs etc…

I can’t see anyway that this wouldn’t be absolutely brilliant – for me, for broadcasters and for advertisers.  I can see Apple edging ever closer to a similar solution – but the advertising-funded model that Google can provide will beat any iTunes-based solution, I think (although iTunes content will be among the search results spat back, of course).

Perhaps I need to get out more?