Despite offering the most affordable way for consumers to get Google TV, the Logitech Revue set-top box will go down as a thing of the past.
Theverge.com reports that at a Logitech investor summit this week, company CEO Guerrino De Luca said the Revue “cost us dearly” and there are no plans to continue on with Google TV.
“To make the long story short, we thought we had invented [sliced] bread,” De Luca said. “We expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes [at] $300.”
But as anyone who has followed Google TV knows, it was far from a success. The Revue now sits on store shelves for around $100 and still isn’t being picked up.
The problem is that Google was unable to strongly differentiate Google TV from the myriad other Internet-connected TV offerings. There was a lot of buzz about being able to use apps and surf the Web, but Google restricted apps such that only the major ones like Netflix and CNN – apps that exist on every other Internet-connected TV – were available.
Google recently revamped its TV platform and now offers dozens of apps ported directly from the mobile Android Market, but there still isn’t a strong, compelling reason to buy a Google TV. Nothing makes it extraordinary.
What would be cool is if Google TV allowed you to chat with others in real-time while you’re watching a show, or analyzed your watching habits such that it could intelligently guess when to change the channel for you. Those kinds of features would be exciting. What it currently offers is not so much.
