The tech giant behind the world’s most popular online search engine is taking another crack at the interactive television market with a redesigned version of its Google TV service, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Friday.
According to the Bloomberg report, the new version of the software, which displays Internet content on a user’s television screen, will feature an easier-to-use interface intended to encourage customers to try out more of the service’s features, Google VP of Product Management Mario Queiroz said.
“The new version, which also is designed to show the YouTube video-sharing service better, opens up the platform for Android developers to build applications for TV,” the business magazine said in its online report, adding that software upgrades will launch in Sony devices early next week and in Logitech units “soon after that.”
That announcement comes one day after Tim Stevens of Engadget reported seeing Logitech Revue boxes, which he said had “just hit the sales floor of a major electronics retailer” and were “prominently sporting” stickers touting “New & Improved: Google TV with Android 3.1 and Android Market.”
That had briefly led to speculation that the units might already contain the updated software, but Logitech representatives squashed those rumors, as Stevens reported in an update to his original story: “We’d like to clarify that these products do not include the next version of Google TV software. The boxes were prematurely updated with the stickers in anticipation of the next release of the Google TV software, which, once available, will be a free and automatic update pushed to all Logitech Revue boxes that are installed and connected to the Internet.”
When the upgrade does finally arrive, it will reportedly help users find programming more easily while browsing than by typing keywords into a box, Gartner Inc. analyst Van Baker told Businessweek. However, Baker doubted that this new version of Google TV would not generate a ton of interest from consumers, saying that it was “still a use model that most consumers don’t really understand.”
“This is one of the early miles of the marathon. We’re running hard, and this is another important step in bringing this functionality to TV,” Queiroz told Bloomberg. “We’re working with a lot of cable providers and with networks to bring whatever content they think is appropriate to TV. Our goal is really to bring content that adds value as opposed to replicate redundant content.”
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