LG announces Google TV technology in, well, TVs

CES looks like being an announcement hotbed this January, and one of the first significant stories to emerge is the annoucement by LG of its future strategy for delivering non-traditional TV entertainment through its new TVs. KitGuru checks the date on its own BBC-funding TV licence and begins typing.

Google is, without doubt, a strange company. While its search engine killed off almost all the competition in the market a long time ago – and its revenue model for advertising has completely changed the world of modern marketing – it has steadfastly struggled in certain areas. Google's online applications have not penetrated corporates as it would have hoped, Apple is still the coolest kid on the mobile phone block and companies like Logitech have run a mile from Google's earlier TV efforts. Google also seem to have made some effort in following the App Store concept. Allegedly.

All that to one side, Google is huge, rich and impossible to ignore.

Certainly, that seems to have been the case for LG. While a number of TV companies have announced Google-based products in the passed, and then struggled to deliver to market, LG is making a lot of ‘we are very determined, we can make it work, stand by – here they come' noises about its new TVs.

Anti-Apple monolith, Samsung, will also showcase a brand new, top of the line 55-inch OLED TV at CES, but this will not be a working model – leading some experts to speculate as to how popular Google really is with the major screen sellers.

The models will all be very appealing, visually, and make us all wish we have $5,000 spare to throw at the problem of ‘Just how should you watch American Football/Soccer on a Sunday afternoon'.

KitGuru says:Is it all just a case of history repeating itself? Microsoft prepared the world for tablet computing around 10 years before Apple made people want it. HTC had the XDA smart phones in the market as a ‘minority interest' product for several years before Apple made everyone realise that they DID want to spend £500 on a phone that does more than calls. Maybe Samsung et al need Apple to make the world realise “Oh. Smart TVs? Oh yes. We want those, here's $2,000”, before they can actually sell the technology themselves in volume.

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