I/O, a Future Social TV and Browser Aps

A new version of Android, new APIs and “Google TV” were some of the things announced at this year’s Google I/O conference. The Chrome App Store and Google’s acquisition of SimplifyMedia were also announced at this event. They are all interesting developments with the potential to have a huge impact on how we consume content online.

Google TV

The idea of viewing the Internet on a TV is not new, but Google’s implementation based on Google Chrome will be a long way ahead of those old thin clients. There is only a small niche market for media boxes and computers connecting TVs to their home networks, and Google TV promises to drive this trend into the mainstream.

In the blog post announcing Google TV, the line “With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web” really stood out. Combining Internet and TV in one device will create a far richer experience by simplifying access to a wider variety of content. Simplifying access and integrating streams of social media content around existing audio/visual content could be very interesting.

There is already a highly active Backchannel about certain TV shows, reality TV, interviews and news. Twitter, with its transparency, effective search tools and the use of hashtags is a great example of this. Currently this turns watching TV into a far more social experience and offers social proof to others watching the feed that supports program promotional activity.

Chrome’s Browser Application Shop

The Chrome Web Store is a browser based application marketplace. The applications are “…regular web applications that are built with standard web tools and technologies” that will run in any current or future generation browser. As discussed in Mozilla Ponders an “Open” Web App Store on ReadWriteWeb.com, developers can make their applications ‘installable’ for Chrome through building the applications into a .crx file.

Aside from the open source discussion, the Chrome Web Store will simplify making money from applications for developers. With the credibility of the Google brand and a centralised store with billing support for an otherwise niche product, the application market for browsers will improve. Creating a software market not tied to a device or operating system, but rather to a browser, will also help to create a device-agnostic computing environment.

Google’s approach is different to the operating system based route that Microsoft is taking. Google Chrome OS, Chrome Web Store and Google’s current range of services and tools available online are all a part of a trend towards cloud computing aimed at the average user. The application store for Chrome might also increase the number of users for the browser, similar to the way that applications have shaped the Smartphone market.