Shoe 1: New Google TV

When Google TV launched last year, it was the equivalent of a potentially delicious loaf of bread that had not yet been baked. The ingredients were there, Google had the technology, they had the reach, they had the money. But no one likes to eat raw bread dough. Google at the time had failed to lock up permissions from a lot of content providers, which was a drag since the idea was to search on the name of a show or a genre and then have links appear to where you could watch online (on a TV network’s site for instance). But if content providers didn’t want to play along, it was mostly just a way of watching YouTube on your TV. A new version of Google TV launched yesterday with a simpler interface but, crucially, no new TV permissions.