Google IO Press Conference: Q&A Live Blog!
1) What will the actual product be called? The product announced today was “Google TV” but is the actual service. The hardware announced by Sony will be called Sony Internet TV according to CEO Howard Stringer. Sounds much like an XYZ Android Phone being branded as “with Google”… a Sony Television with Google TV.
2)”Does Hulu work on Google TV?”
“We support any site that supports flash. So the answer is yes.”
3) How much will it cost and what will the models be?
You buy the television set and it is all-inclusive.
Buy the box and there are no other additional fees. The price of the box basically.
Pricing of TV and others will come in Fall.
4) Does Intel support hardware acceleration with Google TV? Not right now… but they will soon.
5) Side note: Howard Stringer is hilarious
6) Timelines? Will deliver by fall of this year but timeframe includes 2011 so how will it become customer ready so quickly? Are they that on-track? They said it and they’ll do it… Fall 2010.
7) Asks a question about Sony Playstation that doesn’t really go anywhere but a laugh
8) Taylor from AndroidAndMe asks about DISH integrating the services in their set top box and they say that WILL come, but there are advantages of having a separate box. A bunch of different options will be available.
9) Will Google TV be EXCLUSIVE at BestBuy? Doesn’t sound like they’re exclusive, but they’re definitely embracing and demonstrating the service. Essentially, if you ask me, I think it means Best Buy is dedicating to creating a Google Experience inside their stores with some sort of direction from Google. Of course that’s just the impression I got and I’m definitely making that assumption myself.
10) Sony was already shipping connected TVs… so why this? Because this is a much more robust platform that is expandable and grows. It wasn’t even a question that they should move to this with the openness and the direction.
11) Google TV will work without a satellite service subscription… will it push people like DISH TV out of the market? The CEO said no, for obvious reasons. World Series, SuperBowl, etc… you’re not going to use the web to view that he says. But I can almost hear Eric Schmidt snickering inside thinking “Fiber. Fiber. FIBERRRRRRRRRR!”
He also said he thinks it WILL replace Subscription in some places like college dorms. That’s trouble for them. College kids make up a HUGE market. And I think people that want to save money make up an even HUGER market? This really could be troublesome for DISH in the long run.
All the CEOs of the Google TV partnership just left but questions aer still being asked of the Googlers.
12) Ad formats for Google TV? They want to get the product experience right first. Over time they’ll rethink how ads can work better on the TV experience, but first they’re focused on getting the user experience right for customers watching TV. We saw new custom ad spots on Android and Vic says they’ll do the same sort of thing for TV.
13) Apple came out with Apple TV and now they call it a hobby – how/why will Google succeed where others have failed? The big difference is Google wants to do this in an open way and bring in the manufacturers and industry leaders to accomplish this together. Plus they want to work WITH existing TVs.
14) What kind of bandwidth is required? 3mb/second you’ll get great performance but the faster the better obviously. This will help drive innovation in broadband speeds as well.
15) You basically told Apple to “stick it” the entire keynote – what would you say to Steve Jobs if he were here? Vic basically says that they are about Web, Openness and moving together with other companies and that is a theme they will continue to push. Personally I want to see a celebrity boxing match.
16) Question about tethering in Froyo. It will be included on Android by default but carriers can choose whether to turn it on or off. Others have already enabled tethering on their own, but Google has built it into the platform in 2.2 to make it easy by default.
17) Question about music on Android Market. They didn’t announce any partnerships for distribution and all they announced was the technical side and that they WILL have this capability.
18) The event is over but pretty soon we’ll be doing Q&A with the Android Team!
Stay tuned.