Google TV Still Searching for Success

Google is a fount of innovation all right, but not everything that squirts out of the spigot is liquid gold. Case in point: Google TV, frenetically hyped as the long-awaited “convergence” technology when it was introduced last October.

Now not everyone agrees on exactly what “convergence” is. It's sort of like “synergy,” which was something CEOs dreamed of a decade or so ago. Nobody knew quite what that was either, although many claimed that, like pornography, they knew it when they saw it.

Anyway, Google TV was supposed to combine the Web's ease of finding stuff (using you know which search engine) with the visual and auditory bliss that comes from popping open a cold one and settling into the recliner for another thrilling episode of Judge Judy.

It hasn't quite worked out that way.

"Slightly negative"

Logitech International, which makes the Revue set-top box that synergizes Google TV with your home disintermediation and entertainment center, reports that revenue was “slightly negative” in the last quarter.

What does that mean? Setting aside corporate jargon, it means there were more people who brought the boxes back for a refund than bought them.

Or, as Logitech Chairman Guerrino De Luca explained it: “There was a significant gap between our price and the value perceived by the consumer.”

Hoping to correct that imbalance, Logitech says it will drop the price of the Revue to $99 from $249.

The box itself is great, no doubt, but De Luca said the real problem is that “Google TV has not yet fully delivered,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Part of the problem is that the TV networks have not rushed to make their programming available to Google, or anyone else for that matter. Also, some consumers have groused that the service is confusing and difficult to use.

As they say these days, whatever.

For its part, Google is still smiley-faced about it all. A spokeswoman told the Journal it's “still early days for smart TVs.”