Settle Down, Internet, There’s Still Plenty To Watch On Google TV

Thursday, 11 November 2010 17:05

Settle Down, Internet, There’s Still Plenty To Watch On Google TV

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Oh noes! No more Fox on Google TV! This will surely cause the Pleideans to finally overrun the earth. Clearly us humans are not capable of getting along. Hopefully the aliens above know that two of the world’s largest media conglomerates haven’t taken the same stance as Disney or NBC Universal. Both Time Warner’s and Viacom’s entire web

library works just fine on Google TV and will probably continue to do so as the second and fourth largest media companies in the world seemingly embraced the platform.

I’m not backpedaling on my Google TV “wait” recommendation but the platform is far from dead in the water. Both Time Warner and Viacom constitute a major portion of the cable channels and their entire library — from what I can tell at least — still works. These two media giants even have shortcuts to their video sites built into the Google TV backend, seemingly encouraging users to check out their content through the Internet.

This whole thing is silly, really. If News Corp, Disney, NBC Universal, and CBS are going to put their content online for free, then said media should be accessible on any Internet platform. That’s exactly what Avner Ronen said to Erick Schonfeld yesterday in reference to his Boxee Box. The game they’re playing now stifles innovation, leaving the lowly consumer as the primary victim. Google TV isn’t even about disruption. It’s about merging subscription-based TV with the content already provided free by the media companies. Sigh.