Among the many reputations Google has is the ability to turn a lemon the first go at something into lemonade the second. That was the case with its Android operating system, which after considerable tweaking, went from latest also-ran in the competition of mobile formats to neck-and-neck with Apple’s iPhone.
In a matter of months, we’ll see if Google can maintain that ability with Google TV, which in less than a year has the rep of an unbalanced trojan horse. Arriving last September as new feature of Sony TV sets, Dish Network and Logitech Revue set-top boxes, Google TV has underwhelmed the public so much that Sony, Dish and Logitech are tight-lipped about how many homes nationwide have their products, much less utilize them.
In separate promotional campaigns from Sony, Dish and Logitech, Google TV was promoted as the better way to see TV programs and enhanced Web sites, as well as search for both content forms. Unfortunately, thanks to software glitches at Google’s end, and refusals to permit transmission of programming at the end of broadcast and cable networks, users were unable to use Google TV as advertised.
Amid to all the hoopla backfire: Google and its comrades also failed to showcase the real asset of Google TV: open interactive platform for all sorts of original applications. With the glitches, Google couldn’t run imaginative work from its brigade of more than 200,000 Android developers. Beyond that, Google wouldn’t turn its own executive talent loose to back Sony, Dish and Logitech’s efforts in public.
Indeed, Logitech had one of the few unique services Google TV could provide and audiences did like, high-definition video calls where dialers saw who they wanted to reach at the other end on-screen, clear in rich HD.
Now Google, through its annual I/O developer conference last month, says the glitches are gone and the new version of Google TV, automatically upgradable into its current household universe, can be the open interactive platform it’s been out to be from the start. By summer’s end, any Android developer can adapt their current Marketplace mobile applications to TV and have the green light to create original TV fare. What’s more, Android’s new Honeycomb format, the forthcoming Ice Cream Sundae model and future upgrades, will be Google TV-compatible from scratch, so new Android developers can jump in with their offerings for the tube. So can those 50,000-plus developers incorporating Adobe’s Flash process into their work, another group impacted by the version 1.0 glitches.
All this will coincide with the launch of Samsung and Vizio Google TVs this fall.
This is a big second chance for Google to make its vision of TV work. Big because the public will finally see what Google TV at the core can produce. Big because if this doesn’t work, there won’t be another crack. There’s so many times, as the saying goes, to encourage people to learn and accept new tricks. And so many times to have the likes of Sony and Dish Network go along with your ride.
Give this your best shot, Google TV. We’ll know in short order whether this shot leads to a new communications road, or an all-time lemon.
Until the next time, stay well and stay tuned!