One Way Google Might Crash Cable's Party

While it doesn’t take much for Google to make headlines, this week’s news that it filed applications to operate a video service in Kansas City was much more than your average “Hey look what Google did” story. From the release of Google TVto its recent YouTube redesign to the way it’s been courting professional talent for its YouTube channels, Google has been steadily inching closer to the world of cable TV and shifting its content-delivery strategy from America’s computers to America’s living rooms.

You might remember how Google got caught up in the Kansas City market to begin with—over two years ago, cities across the country jockeyed to become the test market for a high-speed Internet service called Google Fiber. One even went so far as to rename a city landmark after the tech giant. In the end, Kansas City was selected as the lucky community, but was the high-speed Internet offering a Trojan Horse for Google to break into the cable TV business?

The company is keeping a tight lid on its plans; in an email to the Kansas City Star, Google spokesperson Jenna Wandres wrote, “We’re still exploring what products will be available when we launch Google Fiber.”

Google’s application is a bit more revealing, however, stating that it “will utilize national and regional video headend facilities to send IPTV” or Internet Protocol Television, the method AT&T uses to deliver cable programming with its U-Verse service.

  1. unexpectedtech posted this