Google announces TV service, week after Apple

The battle for the living room has kicked of in full force. Almost a week after Apple announced the new Apple TV, Google’s Eric Schmidt reveals plans to bring the web to to the living room via Google TV.

The free Google TV service will allow couch potatoes full internet access. The search engine giant plans to partner up with other technology and media companies in order to provide easy access to the new service and to make sure that there is worthwhile content to connect to through the portal. Schmidt said that Google will not produce their own content as that is not in line with Google’s way of doing business and that it mainly wants to open the channels to start partnerships with content producers.

Google supplies the Google TV software, that will be embedded in living room devices. The service will start operations in the US and will at first be built in in a Logitech settopbox and a Sony HDTV and Blu-ray player. The user interface, reports The Guardian, looks somewhat like a simplified computer desktop.

It is not quite clear yet how people will use the service. Google writes to developers that it expects user to take a QWERTY input device to hand, but that at the same time, use should be “easy, one handed and possibly in the dark”.

With Google TV, Google wants in on the huge pie of world wide advertising revenue, that is estimated to be as much as 117 billion dollar.