Wall Street Journal Corroborates Early Reports of Google Entertainment System

This past weekend it was revealed that Google requested permission from the FCC to begin testing a home entertainment system that would use Bluetooth and WiFi to stream content to music players inside a home. It’s being built based on Android and it’s assumed that Android@Home and Google Open Accessory will be the driving forces behind the project.

While the FCC report was enough to get us to believe that Google was, in fact, working on this, we’re glad to see the Wall Street Journal reporting very similar developments. They heard from the usual people who are familiar with the matter that Google will mainly look to provide a music streaming system not unlike Sonos. It could be controlled by Android apps on both tablets and phones.

That was already the obvious assumption but they’re also reporting that Google has room to introduce other multimedia options with this project, including video and images. Google will apparently market this device under their own brand. They don’t even market the Galaxy Nexus with their own name except calling it a Google Experience device (which lots of other devices also do).

It”s plausible to suggest Google will be coming to I/O with this technology and that it might have been the main cause for the event to be delayed. It’s always hard to pinpoint these sorts of things but we can’t imagine Google won’t have a consumer-ready product ready to show off at their own developers’ conference when they made such a big deal out of it last year.

It’s not quite Google TV but you have to wonder why Google wouldn’t add similar built-in functionality Google TV software. Of course, something like this might not require a TV but when it comes to video and images, a TV is likely needed anyway. Either way, Google should be coming to town with a separate product and we’re excited to see how it all turns out. [Wall Street Journal]