A recent Los Angeles Times article reports fears within the broadcast entertainment industry about Google’s plan to join the Internet with traditional television. It will be known as Google TV, and it will allow viewers to watch TV shows and movies, independent of broadcast networks or cable channels. The setup would require a TV or set-top box with Google software (scheduled for stores this fall), a connection to the Internet, and a keyboard. iPhone or Android phones will also be able to operate Google TV.

Hollywood executives fear Google TV will encourage consumers to abandon their monthly cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of watching video via the Internet, which would result in a subsequent loss of established royalty and advertising revenue streams. They merely have to point to the ravages of the music and newspaper industries as precedent. Said Harold Vogel, president of Vogel Capital Management, “If you don't control the signal, then you can't provide your own advertising. It really destroys the legacy business model."

The Google TV camp interprets access to broadcasters’ vast archives of old TV episodes or classic films more benignly. Says, Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, "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." Google TV’s reach would include online services such as Hulu.

Champions of Google TV point to the promise of targeted and interactive advertising. They forecast substantial revenue for content creators as distributors pay for the right to stream movies and TV shows to subscribers. Dureau further argues that Google’s software and new applications developers would give content producers increased revenue in the same way Google and Apple have transformed the mobile phone industry. What’s in it for Google? Just a small piece of every online video search transaction. But broadcasters are worried that Google’s advertising auction model, whereby search terms are sold to the highest bidder, would be disruptive for network ad sales.