Two weeks after Logitech declared its experience with Google TV was a $100 million debacle, rumors are swirling that Samsung is about to pick up the Google TV ball and start running with it.
At last year’s CES, the two talked about collaborating on Google TV, but Samsung has yet to commercialize anything. Reuters quoted the president of Samsung’s TV operation saying that the company would unveil a Google TV offering next year, though not at CES.
Given Logitech’s experience with the not-ready-for-primetime Google TV, that’s probably understandable.
On the other hand, LG has already said it will have a Google TV at CES. Sony has been selling a Blu-ray player and a connected TV that sport Google TV.
At the same time, Google is moving its Google Music out of the beta stage. From the standpoint of an ISP, Google Music becoming popular could become problematic.
Google music competes with Apple’s iTunes store. Where Apple has deals with all the major record labels, Google Music has yet to strike a deal with Warner Music. Both store music in the cloud, but Apple does so for a fee, while Google does it for free.
And here’s where the potential problem comes in. Apple’s approach is to go through each user’s music library, and if it has the songs itself, it simply notes that the user has rights to it. Apple will only upload and store those songs that it doesn’t already have a copy of. Google, on the other hand, uploads and stores each user’s entire library. That could generate an enormous amount of upstream traffic.
One other distinction between the two services: Google Music is also competing directly with MySpace. As a social networking site, MySpace long ago lost out to Facebook, but it has excelled in one area: websites catering to musicians. Google Music is offering similar support to musicians in a clear bid to woo bands away from MySpace.