14 DAY TRIAL // It's safe to say by now that Google TV hasn't been a huge hit, actually it's been a big disappointment to most of its users, Google and the other companies involved. Google said as much a few months ago when it announced that a big improvement to the software was on its way.
Later, rumors of Google asking manufacturers to hold back on the devices while the new software was baked started coming out. Now, new rumors are surfacing hinting at a revamped Google TV, to be revealed soon.
The Google TV software has been updated, the rumors say, something that was clearly needed. Users complained about the confusing and buggy interface, so a revamp that cleans up all the different options and menus and also adds more polish is welcomed.
But the hardware is getting an upgrade as well, apparently it will come with a faster processor, Google TV uses Intel's Atom CPU also used in most notebooks.
One of the biggest additions though is the ability to run Android applications on the Google TV devices. This is something Google promised from the start and said that the Android Marketplace would open for Google TV users at the beginning of this year.
Obviously this hasn't happen, either because the platform was pushed back or maybe because there was little interest from the developers.
Google is now ready to take another swing at it, apparently, and the revamped Google TV should be coming soon, most likely at the Google I/O 2011 developers conference, a couple of weeks from now.
Google TV is still an interesting project from another perspective, it's built on Android but it's the first time the mobile operating system has been put into devices that weren't, well, mobile on a large scale.
It's a heavily modified Android, but it shows the flexibility of the operating system. Even more interesting, Google TV uses the Chrome browser, which not only was not designed to run on Android, but is actually competing with it via Chrome OS.