Yep, it’s happened. Google has announced its ultimate move. It’s not enough that they own your search engine, your calendar, your email, your voicemail, you operating system, and your phone. Now they want to own your TV, as well.

What the heck. Let ‘em have it.

After all, they’re working on this TV thing with Intel, Sony, Logitech, Best Buy, DISH Network, and Adobe.

These folks were all together under one roof today at the Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco to announce ...

GoogleTV!

And what is Google TV?

Well, per the press release: “It’s an open platform that adds the power of the web to the television viewing experience.”

What?

Let’s read further …

“Google TV is based on the Android platform and runs the Google Chrome web browser. Users can access all of their usual TV channels, as well as a world of Internet and cloud-based information and applications, including rich Adobe Flash based content – all from the comfort of their own living room and with the same simplicity as browsing the web.

“When coupled with the Intel Atom processor CE4100, Intel’s latest SoC designed specifically for consumer electronics, the new platform will offer home theatre quality A/V performance.

“Sony and Logitech said they would be delivering products based on the new Intel Atom processor and running Google TV later this year. While Google TV is designed to work with any TV operator, at launch the user experience will be fully optimized when paired with DISH Network.

“Google TV expands video choice from the hundreds of channels available today through a pay TV provider to the vast storehouse of video content available through the web and streaming videos.

“The Google TV experience is complemented by the ability to watch streaming video from leading content platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, and YouTube. Google TV will also have the capability to run apps from the Android Market.”

Got it?

We’ll give you some time to mull over the concept.

Meanwhile, here’s a note received this morning from Art Swift, Vice President of Marketing at MIPS:

“MIPS Technologies was pleased to see today’s Google TV announcement. Google’s announcement is clearly well aligned with our own vision of the future connected television and entertainment experience.

“To date, MIPS Technologies has synergistically supported Google’s commitment to the architecture-neutral, open source nature of Android by ensuring that our licensees have access to the best available software ecosystem for Android on MIPS-Based solutions.

"Google TV is the latest architecture-neutral solution from Google and, leveraging our past work with Android and our ongoing relationship with Google, MIPS Technologies is now in an excellent position to work with our licensees as Google TV moves beyond its initial reference platforms and into mainstream development within the digital home market—a market where MIPS is already the number one processor architecture.”

May 20, 2010

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