Google tries for Android sequel with Google TV

From CNET News.com: Think of Google TV as the second season of Project Android: open-source software, backed by industry partners, created in hopes of unlocking a potentially huge new repository of Internet searches.

In 2005, when Google first acquired the team that would develop Android, smartphone users were browsing the Web, but the quality of the experience was pretty poor, until 2007, when Apple released the iPhone. Android, released a little more than a year later, aimed to provide the same level of quality as Apple's iOS software but to spread it across different hardware makers and wireless carriers in hopes of boosting mobile Internet search.

As Logitech gets ready to unveil its Revue set-top box running the Android-based Google TV software later today, it's not hard to see the same sequence playing itself out. In this scenario, Google and other TV software companies are butting heads with powerful cable and satellite companies, who have for years resisted the encroachment of the Internet into the living room. More and more Internet-connected TVs are sold every year, and several companies, such as Roku and Boxee, have found a modicum of success building Internet-connected boxes.

But no one has come up with a breakout hit that brings the Internet to TVs the way the iPhone changed the way the Internet was experienced on mobile phones. Google, along with well-known partners such as Logitech, Sony, Intel, Best Buy, and Dish Network, are betting that Google TV could be that type of product.

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