Google TV - If The Vikings Don't Deliver, The Pirates Will

The technology and media industries have been at war for the last decade. In no small part due to Google reinventing the media marketplace, or ‘f**king with the magic’, as Ken Auletta so memorably noted. Messrs Brin and Page snaffled the lunches of content kings all over the world to create a $160bn corporation. Ever since, their algorithmic tanks have been parked on the manicured lawns of global players, such as Time Warner and Vivendi launching salvo after salvo into their infinity swimming pools. Including sucking up vast swathes of the media industry’s treasured IP and giving it away for free, whilst collecting gazillions of Adwords dollars. In short, there’s been plenty to keep the battle raging and the legal eagles billing. With such history, the recent announcement about Google TV felt like another howitzer blast in the direction of the marketing industry’s Tuscan holiday villas : Mountain View’s last surge into the media world’s ultimate stronghold to grab its most valuable real estate. One slight change to the script is that this time Google has brought along a friend. One with bonafide Hollywood credentials. The Google TV bandwagon includes Sony (owners of MGM, Columbia and Tri-Star), which will be making the kit for the Android powered web TVs. That could help the thawing of relations between Big Media and Big Tech. Maybe a first step in recognising the reality that the geeks of San Jose will never actually produce blockbuster content. While the players of Santa Monica will never actually develop global technology platforms. However, as with all these wonderful new media possibilities, the real options are not restrained by the technology, but by the backroom double-dealings and the beancounters’ carving up the juicy new revenue streams. The world’s media markets are worth something in the order of $600bn annually. And that’s the prize that the execs of Beverley Hills and Sand Hill Road have their respective high-powered sights set upon. As a result, suspicions will remain that Google TV is looking to grab media’s ultimate mega-market. Just as Google Search absorbed the revenues of its beloved print businesses. Or, worse still, that Page & Brin plan to unbundle those pricey 500-channel cable and satellite TV packages, where must-see sports comes complete with never-to-be viewed shopping channels. And that Google TV is actually a kind of giant Hulu. But one where TV execs aren’t pulling the strings. However, a pot of gold remains within sight. Whenever Hollywood Players and Bay Area Geeks sit...

...across the table from each other they can both see the sunlit uplands where profitable green pastures lie. And they both know they each have some pieces of the diamond-encrusted jigsaw puzzle. One sits upon booming but largely low-value web advertising markets (search aside). While the other maintains its stranglehold on shrinking but still super-premium TV advertising channels. Worth approximately $70bn annually in the US alone. And as Mary Meeker noted in her latest uber-summary of the world’s convergent trends, big audiences on the web are sold for far less than big audiences on TV. Average CPMs for the web are a couple of bucks. Broadcast TV can sell that same attention for nearer thirty dollars.

Squaring such conundrums is far from straightforward. However, there is one group that trumps all the gazillionaires - the consumer. The NYT recently suggested that the content kings and the ubergeeks are being forced to operate more closely by punters’ behaviour and that the web could become TV’s ‘wingman’. With social media, in particular, driving mainstream audiences and greater participation. Opening the way for a wave of TV-driven ecommerce start-ups. Think World Cup 2010, plus Facebook, plus Nikestore.com running simultaneously on your 48-inch wall-mounted plasma.

And there are glimmers of hope for such collaboration. Comcast believes Google TV is complementary to its offering, not a direct threat. The Pay TV giant’s view is that Mountain View is offering TV plus Search on one box. Not just a bigger YouTube.

No one knows what will happen. But it’s going to be interesting to see how the playing field develops. Of course, there’s nothing like a common enemy to help legal teams break bread. Maybe the never-ending rise of P2P file-sharing will be the key to the success of Google TV. However, that’s the common enemy that drove the music industry into the arms of Steve Jobs who then proceeded to re-engineer and co-opt its digital supply chain. While the industry chiefs were playing with his shiny new toys. Now the music bosses now have to swallow pricing directions from Apple while their original P2P enemies roll on regardless. (Leading to further surreal actions, such as the RIAA, the music industry’s status dog, sending Limewire a bill for 1.5 trillion dollars).

So, for the moment at least, it seems that the very human qualities of suspicion, greed and mistrust are the rocks upon which partnerships between Hollywood and Silicon Valley will continue to be wrecked. As Sony’s Grandest of Fromages, Sir Howard Stringer, indicated when joining the Google TV bandwagon: 'Running a corporation in today's world of co-opitition is like jumping into a Viking boat where you might be handed an oar or you might be handed an axe.'

However, in the era of networked media, consumers always get what they want in the end. If the Vikings can’t deliver, the pirates will.

Comments

[Columbus DJ]

Wow... I haven't heard about this... is there anything that Google isn't getting into? They are sure insulating themselves against a downturn (if there ever is one), in the search engine business... but I guess to a large extent, all of their businesses are reliant on their search engine.

[James Cherkoff]

Yes I think that's right, Google TV is really Search for TV Content.

[buy logitech revue]

It's just my opinion, but I believe we are headed to a very Googalized society. Google are slowly taking over every possible media channel that controls our attention and I really can't see any serious competitors trying to stop them.

At the end of the day, any medium where they can display Ads means money, so good on them for their forward thinking.

[James Cherkoff]

Having just moved onto Chrome & G-Reader to accompany my Android phone, I'm very tempted to agree with you. However, I'm in a niche. Also, the rise of Facebook as an advertising platform to threaten Google's core revenues and Apple's following of mega-fans may balance things out somewhat.

Thanks for your comment, although I'm confused by your 'name'. Are you working for Google?