Rumors are that LG will be the next company to offer a TV with Google’s television operating system, and the first new product for the OS to be unveiled in more than a year.
Google TV was first introduced at a joint Sony/Google event in New York City late last year. A couple months thereafter, Sony introduced a line of TV sets powered by Google TV, alongside a Logitech set-top box that offered Google TV to those who didn’t want to buy a brand new TV.
But in the nearly 12 months since, there have been no new Google TV products in the market. In fact, it’s said that Google was so disappointed with the launch of the platform that it specifically prevented any other manufacturers from showing off Google TV products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
According to a report from Bloomberg, though, the upcoming 2012 will be a different story. The publication cites people “with knowledge of the project” as saying LG, the second-biggest TV manufacturer, will finally breathe some new life into Google TV during the January trade show.
Part of the reason Google TV has been a flop so far is that it failed to deliver on its promise of offering third-party Internet-powered content. Instead, it remained a stale online TV platform that offered fewer options than other Internet-connected TVs.
That changed late last month when the first major update to Google TV was rolled out, bringing a modified version of the Android Market to Google TV users and widely expanding what users could do in picture-in-picture mode while still watching live TV.
It’s unclear if companies other than LG will have Google TV products on hand at CES. At this year’s show, there were supposed to be a handful of manufacturers before Google pulled the plug. Clearly, though, it is not the end for Google TV and the search giant wants to fight to make this work.
