How Will Europe Greet Google TV?

Google will launch its TV service in Europe early next year, announced Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt convincing the policy makers to embrace the Internet in the TV arena.

The launch of Google TV in the U.S. in October was blocked by three of the top broadcast networks fearing that Google would gain a monopoly over the advertising space.

Though nothing was stated officially to back up the move, “Everybody knows the lock that Google has on the Internet traffic in terms of advertising,” Van Baker, an analyst with Gartner, had told Reuters.

Schmidt in his speech to the Edinburg television festival, said, “Some in the US feared we aimed to compete with broadcasters or content creators. Actually our intent is the opposite.”

He said, the TV and the Internet screens were converging, he said and a TV shows were being added in social networking sites like Twitter and chat forum.

“We seek to support the content industry by providing an open platform for the next generation of TV to evolve, the same way Android is an open platform for the next generation of mobile,” he said.

Schmidt also said that Europe had invented many media-related inventions but were no longer the world’s leading exponents in these fields.

“We expect Google TV to launch in Europe early next year, and of course the UK will be among the top priorities,” he said.

“Stifling the Internet – whether by filtering or blocking or just plain turning the ‘off’ switch – appeals to policy makers the world over,” he said. “Instead, policy makers should work with the grain of the Internet rather than against it.”

“Google describes itself as an opportunistic company. So while it may not have wanted to buy Motorola’s operations, it may now assess whether retaining these assets can compensate for the risk of owning them,” New York-based Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey wrote in a note this week.