Google Wants To Provide Search Services For Your TV

Google has started testing a service with DISH Network that allows you to search TV programming and web content.

The test is confined to a few select employees and their families and could be discontinued at any time, according to WSJ sources.

The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google's YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.


Testers can search by typing queries using a keyboard rather than a remote control. Google then hopes to use information gathered from searches and viewing preferences to target ads to individual households.

In addition to Dish, Google has been talking to other television service providers and hardware makers, encouraging them to use Android-based technologies to offer a broader range of programming, a more personal experience, and ads.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said that it "makes sense that people would use Android as an operating system for set-top boxes and buddy boxes and TVs" and added "all of those ideas have been proposed by our partners."

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