Google TV and the beginning of the Web TV Wars

An "iPhone" like value chain has been in most digital media consultants' slide decks for quite a few years now. The technology is actually not that hard (see our lab lashups of MyPCTV here), what is more the issue is that putting together the whole value chain is hard. People were expecting Apple to do it, but Google has come out the gate first:

Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.

The Google TV value chain (now, and predictably to come) is shown in the media supply chain diagram above. We expect a lot of acquisitions by Google to bolster their positions across the value chain. Google will alsouse it as a major new channel for its Advertising engines

But we also expect a lot of competition. A lot of players from the Media, ICT and Consumer Electronics area are going to try and ensure hey are not outmanouvered or left out by this play. This marks the start, not the end, of the Web TV war.

Of course its anything but a slam-dunk as Google (and any other player) has to persuade people to take on Yet Another Set Top Box or a Smart TV, and there are many Good Enoughs (eg IPTV, existing WebTV and the MyPCTV approach that I noted above) that can run as over the top services.

One just wishes Google was more trustworthy as a company, they are not my first choice of someone to run such an end to end value chain.

We also expect to see an increasing PR assault on the BBC, as it has a business model that can counter the Google approach fairly successfully.