Google TV

A source has informed me that Google is in the process of purchasing a massive amount of bandwidth and a major network upgrade. The source didn't confirm or deny whether Google was purchasing bandwidth from Level3, but all signs point to Level3. Now I don't want to go down the Google VoIP road which up till now was mere speculation and rumor based on Google's recent interest in 'dark fiber'.

However, my souce said that the amount of bandwidth purchased could only mean one thing - video. Of course video could be just about anything. Is Google going to offer videoconferencing, video streaming, video-on-demand? Imagine if it is video-on-demand. Google can offer movies for paid download ala the iTunes model.

Of course, the pay-per-download model so far has only really taken off with music and not movies.For example, Movelink offers movie downloads for \$1.99 - \$4.99, and I've tried it myself, but it hasn't taken off like iTunes has. One problem is the damn selection - it's way too limited. I expect Movielink to have at least the same number of movies as NetFlix, if not more, since Netflix has to pay for the DVD costs, mailing costs, inventory, etc. Movielink simply stories movies as a digital file on hard disks and merely has to pay for bandwidth and hard disk storage. Maybe Hollywood still is uncomfortable even with DRM protections put into the movie digital files?

Well, can Google succeed where Movielink has failed? Are they buying loads of bandwidth for video-on-demand? Why not take this one step further and speculate that Google could become the next Comcast, Time Warner Cable, etc. and offer live TV programming using the Internet as the deliver mechanism?

With Google's market capitalization they can buy and build their own TV network using not coax or satellite to deliver live TV programming but whatever broadband pipe you have. With a ton of bandwidth available and with the proper QoS mechanisms in place they can stream live TV programming to Google TV subscribers.

GTV anyone?
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