Jason Dunn
03-31-2006, 11:42 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060330-6495.html' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060330-6495.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Google is well-known for starting all kinds of projects, some of which, like Google Earth, turn out to be incredibly useful, while others, like Google Video, stumble out of the gate. The company's executives take a light-hearted approach to their blue-sky ambitions, even showing off whiteboard scribbles of "Google moon bases" and "Google space elevators" in a recent Time magazine interview. However, behind the humor is a real push at Google to find a business, other than search engine advertising, that generates significant amounts of revenue. This frantic search is driven by the need to keep Google's stock price at or above current levels. The latest rumor involves the possibility of Google TV, a project that could involve the search engine company getting into television advertising, or even a full-blown Google interactive TV service."</i><br /><br />So here's the thing about Google: I admire that they're willing to try so many things, and that they can move quickly (Microsoft can learn many lessons from them in this regard), but by the same token the Internet is littered with the carcasses of Google projects that launched and then never became anything special. Is Google TV destined to become another Gmail or another Orkut?