Google TV Spooks Hollywood

Google wants to bring the Internet to your TV set, but many in Hollywood want Google to stay off their turf. Companies fear that the search king's Google TV project—which will allow users to search for and watch online videos via their TV sets—will encourage viewers to ditch their cable subscriptions, upending the entertainment industry. Google says its TV effort will actually help content creators make money ... though it admits it doesn't yet know how it's going to make money from the project.

But fear not, says Google's head of TV technology. "There's no secret plan. We're not designing a rocket that's going to the moon. At the end of the day, the story's simple. We're putting a browser in the TV to enable a whole bunch of things that the studios and the networks are already doing today, but in a less disjointed fashion." And analysts agree that the Internet will come to TV whether Google is leading the charge or not, though that's not doing much to bolster TV execs' optimism, reports the Los Angeles Times.