What’s old is new again it seems with Google rumoured to be dusting off an old name out the Google product graveyard. That’s right, rumours today are suggesting that Google will be renaming Android TV to Google TV, or is that Google TV 2?
Firstly this seems to be consistent with some of Google’s other branding choices with Android Pay becoming Google Pay, Android Wear becoming Wear OS etc. However the strange one here is Google has already released and killed a product called Google TV.
Back in 2010 Google in partnership with Logitech and later Sony released their first TV product under the name Google TV, and yes it was powered by Android. For three years they continued to release Google TV branded TVs and set top boxes before killing the program.
Just over 12 months after the last Google TV device was end of life Android TV was born. Jump forward six years and perhaps now Google is looking at moving back to the Google TV brand. Let’s must hope it’s not Nest TV, because I find the whole Nest re-branding confusing.
If there is a consistent strategy with Google’s branding I’m struggling to find it. What’s Google, Nest and Android Branded seems not 100% clear, not to mention Chrome is that a brand or a Google sub-brad? In the end this is a rumour and as such should be ingested with liberal amounts of heart smart salt.
It has been good to see Google slowly iterating away on Android TV, more content apps are becoming available, service like Disney+ launched with a Android TV app, and device and OS updates continue to roll out. In Australia all of the major broadcasters now have apps in the Android TV Play Store, that’s a big step.
With Google opening up the platform a little more to broadcaster with options for customisation it’s possible Google could manoeuvre themselves into being the platform for 3rd parties to get into mildly decent set top boxes. With Google I/O supposed to be almost here we may see several announcements like this start to roll out soon.
I’m surprised how many people still don’t realise Android is basically Google. I don’t know why they don’t just integrate it all into Google already anyway.