Internet giant Google's coming to your TV set

INTERNET giant Google is out to expand its kingdom to the living room with an ambitious new service that lets people mesh television viewing with surfing the web.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer, left, and Intel CEO Paul Otellini show off Google TV at the Google conference in San Francisco / AP

INTERNET giant Google is out to expand its kingdom to the living room with an ambitious new service that lets people mesh television viewing with surfing the web.

"Google TV", developed in partnership with technology titans Sony, Intel and Logitech, fuses the freedom of the internet with television programming.

Google executives vowed their TV platform will succeed where offerings such as Apple TV have foundered.

"Google TV is a new platform that we believe will change the future of television,'' Google group product manager Rishi Chandra said, after unveiling the new service at a software developers conference in San Francisco, California.

"Users don't have to choose between TV and web; they can have both.''

Google TV, which is powered by Google's Android software and Chrome web browser, can be accessed using upcoming web-enabled televisions from Sony or set-top boxes from Logitech that route web content to existing TV sets.

Sony and Logitech said the sets and boxes will be available in the United States in time for the year-end holiday shopping season and be rolled out internationally next year.

Pricing for the TV sets or the set-top boxes was not disclosed.

During today's demonstration of the Internet TV technology, Google conducted a series of internet searches in a drop-down box that appears at the top of television programs.

The search results pointed to internet videos and other content related to the television program on the screen.

A telecast of a sporting event can be shrunk into a small ``picture-in-picture'' box so a viewer can look at statistics or other material about the game on TV.

Viewers will also be able to make search requests by speaking into a remote that runs on Google's Android operating system.

And of course, users can simply use the entire screen for web surfing.

Three of Google's biggest rivals - Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc - also have been trying to bring more internet video and services to televisions.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs once described his company's device for tethering TVs to the internet as a "hobby''.

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey expects Apple to become much more serious about its efforts now that Google is expanding into TV.

"The whole game for Google is to become the (operating system) for the living room and make sure Apple doesn't,'' McQuivey said.