Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, Oct 5 (IANS) Google is teaming up big-name brands like HBO, Netflix, Pandora and the NBA for the expected rollout of Google TV, the web giant’s “multimillion-channel TV” system some time soon.

Run by Google’s Android operating system, it will let users view all kinds of Web content on their televisions, Google said Monday announcing the partnerships on its official blog.

The post announced that other deals are in place for Web sites to optimize their content for Google TV. CNN.com is one of those sites as are others, including TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, owned by parent company Time Warner.

“One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers,” Ambarish Kenghe, developer product manager for Google TV, said in the post.

Other partnerships include NBC Universal, which plans CNBC Real Time, an application that tracks stocks, and Twitter, which will let users post to the microblogging site as they’re watching a show.

HBO, also owned by Time Warner, will offer more than 600 hours of programming optimized for Google TV. The NBA has built NBA Game Time, which will give real-time score updates and highlights.

Google joins fellow tech giant Apple in making preholiday season moves into the world of television. While online entertainment has emerged as a viable option through sites such as YouTube and Hulu, there are still significantly more television viewers than Web users worldwide.

Music sites such as VEVO, Pandora and Napster are building apps for the platform, as are Amazon Video on Demand, The New York Times and USA Today.

“This is just the beginning,” Kenghe wrote. “Over the next few weeks, you can expect to hear from more sites that are enhancing their Web content for the television.”

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)