Last week saw the announcement of Google TV, the latest in roll out of Google’s plan to rule pretty much everything. It will allow users to essentially search as they do on google.ie to find what they want to watch.

A simple example is – you are at home and want to watch the Simpsons. Google Tv is already set up and you simply access the search bar and type in Simpsons. Some results could be:

• Simpson movie I bought on Itunes
• Episode of Simpsons running on Sky 1
• Youtube clips featuring Simpsons
• The episode i sky+’d last week etc

It combines all of these into one search result and you would choose the option you want. Seems simple enough. I am sure it will be on every 15 year old Christmas list to organize their porn collection.

It searches multiple sources to return relevant results in the same way as the internet search tool works. It is in theory a perfect system. But how will it treat episodes people (not me) download illegally. Will it recognize them? Worse, will it report me to the Gardai? The questions continue. What if there are videos on your hard drive that you may not want the world knowing about. A secret love of Greys Anatomy for example….

There will be a cost to run Google Tv. For everyone not ready to go out and buy a new Tv with integrated Google TV pre-installed, a set top box will have to be purchased. Personally I already have my NTL box, Wii, Xbox and surround Sound system. I don’t know if I have room. On top of that I don’t think I really have a need currently. It is another one of those ‘Its cool but do I need it’ conversations.

A video by google explaining how it works is available here,Google TV and more details can be found on google.ie/tv.