It’s too early to say definitively whether Google TV will “change the way we think about television itself,” as Blip.TV CEO Mike Hudack wrote today (h/t RWW), but it’s off to a good start. Following on Google’s official announcement of the service at Google I/O in May, today the company has announced some of the many partners with which it will collaborate when Google TV launches later this fall. (CBC.ca says that Google TV will be available this month, but I can’t find any news to that effect besides Sony’s launch of the Google TV-compatible NSX-46GT1 web TV on October 12th, which may or may not correspond with when the service itself is available.)
On the media side, Google’s launch partners include Turner Broadcasting — “including TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, available anytime through Google TV” — NBC Universal’s CNBC Real Time, HBO, the NBA, and a few news sites like The New York Times and USA Today. On the techier content side, they’ve got Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, Napster, VEVO, Pandora, and Twitter. Quite a lineup, and their demo video (below), shows that the TV apps produced by this collaboration aren’t just dumped from the web, but have been tailored for an integrated Internet-TV experience.
Google has also beefed up the Google TV website with an official, pretty-looking tour.
(Google TV Blog | Google TV preview page)
