Who am I to argue with Google about their expectations regarding TV over the internet ?
Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV.
It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.
“The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s [infrastructure] doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect,” Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.
Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks’ high-quality delivery of shows.
One cable chief executive, Duco Sickinghe from Belgian operator Telenet, said it was “the best news of the day” to hear that Google could not scale for video.
Dang, where have I heard this before….oh yeah .
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I couldn\’t agree more. I\’ve tried and tested anything and anyone offering tv over internet in my neck of the woods and nothing even comes close to a satisfactory quality.. yet. And I agree that it will take some heavy investments to get the speed up to a level where TV will be cool over the regular broadband connection.
Comment by Rasmus -
Mark,
Great thoughts. But for a genius and a revolutionary like you I\’m very shocked by your linear thinking. You are thinking about todays technologies solving tomorrow\’s problems. The thing is, tomorrow\’s technology is nothing like todays. OK, so maybe it won\’t be \”broadband\” over copper the way we know it today. But it won\’t be TV or cable as we know it today either.
Jon Sandy hit it right on the nose with the Bill Gates \”no one will ever need more than 640 KB of Ram.\” comment. On that note, remember when we weren\’t going to get a PC processor over 166K? The \”super processors of the 90\’s required liquid nitrogen to keep them from burning up. Now my cell phone has more processing power and memory than those super computers.
Honestly, 7 years ago could you fathom 2GB of storage on a flash drive the size of your thumbnail?
The list goes on…
Love ya Mark! Keep pushing the limits!
Comment by Brad -
Dave Burstein obviously knows quite a bit of info.
Google, though not evil- is pretty stupid.
Never say anything so close-minded.
Anyone re-call the famous Bill Gates “no one will ever need more than 640 KB of Ram.” ? ?
If people can use Binary Newsgroups to distribute high definition TV’s shows that are downloaded by the hundreds of thousands, than surely more legal means of high-quality video content is easily feasible. Online media downloading is already a multi-billion dollar industry, so getting ahead in the market would definitely mean big bucks.
Point #2: With the proliferation of DVR’s and Tivo type devices, many many people aren’t watching their programs live anyway. Commercials suck the scheduling doesn’t always work out. Obviously downloading media content like TV shows is quite appealing if it isn’t live. That’s where the money will be, and that’s where we will find our solution to still being able to watch high-definition content via the internet.
-Jon Sandy
Comment by Jon Sandy -
Looks like Google is back tracking on what Vincent said.
http://gigaom.com/2007/02/09/google-web-is-ok-for-tv-despite-what-you-may-have-read/
Here’s an excerpt from the article linked to above:
Some remarks from Vincent Dureaus well-received speech at the Cable Europe Congress were quoted out of context in news reports, said a Google spokesperson Friday. The further background explanation from Google is that Dureau was responding to a question and was trying to address a potential bottleneck Google does see, which they say exists between Googles own content-delivery infrastructure and the cable set-top box in your home.
Comment by Tyler -
have u seen or heard about Joost? http://www.joost.com
Comment by Mahei -
Granted, Google isnt ready for TV — but lets face it the convergence of all media devices is upon us. Even dvd sales are going down, and everyone digs a good dvd night. Freedom combined with technology is a path to innovation. The cool thing is we dont even know what we will stumble upon as we try to breakthrough a new inventive cycle. Technology, Social networking, Viral marketing, standard economic of supply and demand and a couple of visionaries can take us to that next level. thanks for the space to blab to ya.
Comment by Gabriel Gayhart -
It’s simple…Google is currently not heading in that direction, OR NOT. In my opinion Google is sticking to its philosophy. Wise move, tell the world you are not going to scale for video and the internet is not designed for TV while secretly indexing all video content/community (esp w/ YouTube merger) on the internet to the point of providing a streamline for society. Give me a break people, Google is going way beyond taking over “TV on the Internet” (cute…) I can’t possibly be the only human being able to see where Google is going in just a few years…can I?
BehrangArts
Comment by Behrang Allahyar -
My memory must be failing me. I recall the Personal Computer as a general concept was thought to save us from the establishment. I don’t recall anyone describing Microsoft as anyones saviour. I do remember Bill Gates saying that the Internet would never amount to much though.
Comment by Henrik -
Mark you are so right-there will never be internet tv or internet movies-because like you and google agree, it can’t happen and it’s not possible.
thanks for clearing that up!
Comment by E.L. -
Don’t bellieve any Google propaganda at this time. They are in the midst of intense negotiations and will say anything to further their position.
The potential for Internet television today is quite viable, not by emulating circuit switched implementations but by emulating packet switched implementations, via multicast IP (remember the old token ring implementations?). True, the Internet does not support it, but a rollout of custom, multicast hubs/farms on the Internet can provide this routing function. A very general idea of a the multicast concept is http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/ipmulti.htm . This is not a new concept. It has been done in NASA, on a smaller scale, 20 years ago.
Then niche television channels can stream over the Internet into the home, with adequate buffering and storage on the home device provided. Consider a Home Shopping Network, a Comedy Channel, a SciFi Network streaming over the Internet. True, the Internet backbone may not be able to support an extreme volume of Internet TV. Who knows what dark fiber capabilites the Telcos possess? And the Telcos won’t tell us their true capabilities until they get the QOS parameters that they want.
VCs, don’t believe a word of their propaganda.
Comment by www.freeway2000.com -
The problem is the HFC networks that feed everyones cable modems.
The nodes are too big for everyone to be accessing video at the same time. If you’ve got 1000 homes passed in a fiber node you’ve got 1000 homes sharing the bandwidth in one loop. Works for email and some percentage of people doing high bandwidth things, but it certainly won’t work for everyone downloading video.
Comment by Erik Schwartz -
Cable t.v. should stay the way it is. It’s good to see Google stay consistent with their beliefs all along. It’s good that they’re taking a centrist point of view
Dafool.com – Everything foolish Blog
Comment by Dafool.com -
Still, the Internet is good at streamlining purchases of TV shows and movies. So watch closely the deal between Amazon Unbox and TiVo. Buy it at Amazon, watch it on TiVo. What’s wrong with that?
Comment by Atwater Village Newbie -
Google’s position is totally consistent with their support of network neutrality. Dumbasses.
Comment by Brad Hutchings -
This is smart on Google’s part because it’ll open up a new revenue stream controlling TV-based advertising without having to shell out big $ for infrastructure to handle TV over the internet (hell, the cable operators will probably pay Google to build their infrastructure). I really don’t understand why everyone is clamoring for net-based TV, aside from the telcos who don’t want to be left out of the party. What people really want is to be able to watch what they want, when they want to. BitTorrent and YouTube have seduced people into thinking that the web is the only way to accomplish this. Well, it’s not. Cable/satellite/wireless companies can do it if they want to put forth the effort.
Comment by Todd -
Our metrics indicate people are willing to download the 720p video produced by Rocketboom.com and TechnologyEvangelist.com. I know these content creators are happy to be able to distribute their shows at this quality level. Admittedly, their shows are not 22 minutes, they usually run 3-5 minutes. Longer shows are coming. Anything in the 700 MB to 1.2 GB is a tolerable download these days. The typical charge to them is $0.25 per GB for direct downloads. The cost is $0.02 per GB if they use our SmartSeed torrent feature. Their shows run about 50 – 100 MB in size so the total cost of delivery per show is $0.01 to $0.03 for direct downloads. On a CPM basis the delivery cost of the show is $30. Given the purchasing influence of these shows’ audiences they have the margin to support an ad model. The ad model aside, the amount of creative freedom these producers are afforded by being able to reach end users directly with no compromise in production quality is something worth championing.
Comment by Mark Smith -
+Increasing compression from newer and better video codecs
+Decrease in cost of local storage (ie 500gb SATA)
+Incrementally increased bandwidth to homes
=Minimal wait HD to iTV (or whatever STB you like)
I agree that currently, transporting 20Gb HD movies over existing 6mbps connections isn’t consumer friendly. But up that to 10-15mbps and use advanced H264 codecs to get the file size to under 3Gb and you’re easily streaming this video at less than 50% network usage.
Comment by Jiller -
Right! You can put this one right beside:
– No one will ever need a computer on their desk
and
– No one will ever need more than 640Kb of memory
Hard to believe that Mr Cuban is betting against innovation and invention.
Comment by Bill Leslie -
The Napster revolution showed the world that people care more about having their media whenever and wherever they wanted and will be willing to sacrifice data quality for this portability. (I don’t mean the quality of the media itself, I mean the bitrate)
Comment by superdave -
wouldn’t the scale ability of Video come from consumers accessing sites like youtube with broadband connections. As long as its easier for the consumers more video clips will be played.
Comment by Denver Internet Marketing -
“Suco Dickinghe”
Comment by Sun -
Mark I’m curious what is your take on The Venice Project aka Joost – will it fail?
Comment by Kasper Retvig -
Dave Burstein obviously knows quite a bit of info.
Google, though not evil- is pretty stupid.
Never say anything so close-minded.
Anyone re-call the famous Bill Gates “no one will ever need more than 640 KB of Ram.” ? ?
If people can use Binary Newsgroups to distribute high definition TV’s shows that are downloaded by the hundreds of thousands, than surely more legal means of high-quality video content is easily feasible. Online media downloading is already a multi-billion dollar industry, so getting ahead in the market would definitely mean big bucks.
Point #2: With the proliferation of DVR’s and Tivo type devices, many many people aren’t watching their programs live anyway. Commercials suck the scheduling doesn’t always work out. Obviously downloading media content like TV shows is quite appealing if it isn’t live. That’s where the money will be, and that’s where we will find our solution to still being able to watch high-definition content via the internet.
-Jon Sandy
Comment by Jon Sandy -
Mark – Out of context quote that led you to an partially misleading follow-up. Vincent Dureau (and you) are absolutely right it’s absolutely impossible for all TV viewing to switch to the Internet in the next five and probably ten years.
I’m factchecking with the Google people the original, and have discussed these subjects with several of them before. I’m pretty sure they agree with my analysis, that while 100% couldn’t possibly switch, 5-10% of TV viewing certainly can switch in 4-6 years, and it could be 20%. I’ve run the numbers on the bandwidth costs involved (I write the DSL industry news), and they work. Bandwidth isn’t free, but it’s getting cheap enough for ABC, for example to claim they are already making money on TV show streaming. That’s not the death of Hollywood or 2929 Entertainment, but 10% of TV viewing is a massive industry developing in a few years. Literally 100 million XBoxes and Playstations will have net connections fast enough to watch a better than standard definition movie over the web, and many people will. A half billion cable, satellite, or telco supplied set tops will be be able to do the same if the company doesn’t prevent it. Customers may demand just that.
Some of the most interesting new stuff is coming to the web. I’m running a web video conference in San Jose in June. Not fair to promote it here, but I’m sending you an invitation if you want to see the changes.
Dave Burstein
Editor, DSL Prime
Comment by Dave Burstein -
I call B.S.
What do you think IPTV is? Why are the Telcos investing so much money to get into your home and deliver you TV content over IP. Sure, this isn’t the public internet, but it won’t be much longer until it is.
The main reason I call B.S. is that Cable companies view Google as evil, mostly because they think Google is going to go after their marketshare. This is Google’s way of trying to make Cable companies think that they aren’t evil so that cable companies will actually work with Google.
The technology is coming down the pipeline very quickly to merge TV and the Internet. It just depends on which device will offer up both of them first. Will it be your DVR, Set top box, home computer, or something else?
Oh, and all of the major networks are starting to offer their content on the public internet.
Comment by Tyler -
they try to read your blog… but have been busy and just recently got to July’s posts
Comment by greg -
I wonder if any of you have checked out Wal-Marts new service of downloading movies from their place? I think the internet is getting crazier by the year.
Comment by Browie.com -
Your so smart.
Comment by Jonathan -
Dont you love googleitis: everything for free thanks to googleJ
Nothing is free, everything has trade-offs. It was not that long ago that Microsoft was the young start-up here to save us from the evil corporation (IBM). Today Google is our saviour and Microsoft is evil how long until we all realize, and begin to question/fear, the vast database of personal information that Google is sitting on.
Everything has a limit… and a price.
Comment by C -