Friday 21 May 2010

Will Google's TV search stand up?

M0les raised a good point in reply to my last post, about search.

Some years ago, I realised that Google had become the first place I looked for things on the web. Even when I knew which company’s website I wanted, a Google search saved me from having to remember the company’s website address. Then it hit me - if something doesn’t appear in the search results, then it might as well not exist.

More recently I’ve begun to notice that some things I know to exist don’t appear in the search results, especially for product searches. I’ve tried a few other search engines, but none offer me the perfect result I am looking for. I wonder, why is it not all there? Could it be in Google’s interests to show some results and not others?

Life is too short to be searching everywhere. If I want to find something - the latest album from my favourite band, for example - I don’t look in every shop to compare prices, I go to the shop I’ve bought from before, because I know they have reasonable prices and the service is good. If the service starts to slip, or prices creep up, then reluctantly I’ll invest the effort to find a new shop to trust. But, I don’t want to be doing that with every purchase. Life is too short.

For TV, it is the TV service operator that I trust to bring me good service. I trust them to present me with a manageable choice of quality content. A service that is suitable for my family’s viewing, makes the process convenient, gives me good value for money and introduces me to new things at a rate I can keep up with.

The question is, will Google TV give me that?

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