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Google says Internet isn't TV
Labels: Cable, CES, Digital, Google, Internet, Jointblog, MacWorld, Media, New Media, TV, Yahoo
TV is TV and the Internet is the Internet...but the differences between TV and Internet are getting more and more blurry.
You'd certainly see no difference if you went to last month's Consumer Electronics Show or MacWorld conferences, where the New York Times thinks the Internet is coming to TV.
High-speed broadband internet access is often bought from high-speed digital cable providers (who also sell VoIP)...so when we pay our monthly bill to just one provider, it gives the appearance TV and Internet might be the same thing.
View any late-night TV talk show and you'll see Leno, Letterman, Conan, Olbermann, Jimmy and Craig (and so many others) all making their own viral video picks found on YouTube.
If you read any interviews from AOL or Yahoo! execs over the past several years, you'll see a common theme describing the Internet as a new version of "interactive TV" and specific services they offer as "channels".
Internet access of audio/video programming through WiFi, WiMax, cellphones, iPhones and more.
So, aren't the Internet and TV becoming one-and-the-same? Certainly, they're sleeping in the same bed.
If 'a' equals 'b' and 'b' equals 'c', then 'a' equals 'c', right?
Interestingly, Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, says the Internet is not designed for TV, according to Reuters News.
It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.
So why does Google say the Internet is not TV?"The Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect," Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.
Hear that sigh?
Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks' high-quality delivery of shows.
It's a collective sigh of relief from global TV broadcast executives finally hearing -- directly from Google -- that even Google sees limitations in their expanding empire. That TV will still keep its own platform. And that the Internet industry and the TV industry are capable of co-existing.
Does that mean they sleep in separate beds or in separate bedrooms?
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, February 08, 2007,
