Google’s Set Top Boxes offer Android TV

Google have recently begun expanding beyond the world of the Web to the more portable world of the mobile phone, with their imminent new platform called Android. Designed to compete with Windows Mobile, Symbian and Apple’s iPhone platforms, Android is part of Google’s strategy to expand the Web beyond its current desktop-bound existence.

However, it seems that mobile phones aren’t the limit of Google’s ambitions. According to new rumours, the search engine company is working on extending Android to all manner of devices, including Set Top Boxes, MP3 players, and any other device that could potentially connect to the Internet.

The rumour about Android being more than just mobile phones has been around for a while, but it was always seen as pure speculation. It stemmed from a talk that Vint Cerf (Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist) gave back in 2006, in which he said:

“In an internet enabled world, there is no reason that a projector could not be online and downloading images, maybe using the Blackberry as a control device.

Surrounded by networked equipment that is reachable anywhere, devices harnessed on a temporary basis to do something for you and then released. I am predicting that during this decade, we will see more systems interacting with other systems like this….”

Now, though, “industry sources” (ah, those mystical industry sources are back again, it seems!) have apparently informed Eric Edlon of VentureBeat that “…although Android will indeed start as a mobile OS, Google intends to expand it to be a sort of universal operating system that will span set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services.”

The Great Goal of Google

This would make sense, as Google’s goal, ultimately, is to get as many people viewing its adverts as it possibly can. Currently, this is predominantly the Web, but Google has pretty much saturated this market with its AdSense advertising programme. Android on a mobile phone is therefore Google’s way of trying to expand the number of eyeballs its ads are seen by, by extending the Web to the mobile device (it’s also developing apps for the iPhone as a way of hedging its bets).

But why stop at mobile devices? We all spend time watching TV, and are so used to adverts on it, we barely even register we’re watching them. Imagine, though, extending the Web to the TV via an open software platform that lets anyone develop on it. Rather than prevous efforts to get people surfing the Web on their TV, which largely have involved just bolting a crappy browser to a Set Top Box, an Adroid Set Top Box would enable you to control the media you view on the screen.

TechCrunch gives some neat examples:

“If creating applications for set-top boxes was more like creating applications for the Web, we’d be able to do a lot more things with our TVs—especially if those set-top boxes were also connected to the Web. Want instant messaging and caller ID on your TV? No problem. Want customized information widgets for the TV that scroll breaking news, weather, sports scores or stock quotes from sources you choose in your own ticker at the bottom of the screen? No problem.

Want to turn that annoying ticker off? No problem. Want to control the camera angles on that basketball game? No problem. Want to add the live video stream from your friend’s cell phone who is at the game? No problem. Want to create your own video mashup of fight scenes from various movies that you can edit right on your TV and share with others on their TVs? No problem.”

Intriguing indeed, and something that the TV-viewing public would love. It would require huge support from the TV industry though, which, given that a lot of them are currently suing Google for illegal content hosted on YouTube, may not exactly be forthcoming. It’ll also take time for TV network companies to distribute the Set Top Boxes over their current models, which would be needed if an Android Set Top Box was to take off in a big way.

But the image that TechCrunch paints of a world with Android TV is an enticing one, and one that you can’t help but feel is inevitable. It might take five or even ten years to reach as the corporate politics plays itself out, but a world of mashup TV linked to your own video and music content stored on your PC and in the cloud, all distributed freely across a dozen Web services and accessible via any device (and all with Google’s AdSense running next to it!) really will be with us very soon.

It’s the future that MediaMentalism was built to report on, and one that Google seems intent on creating.

[Source: VentureBeat, via TechCrunch]