Google reportedly preparing to launch Android TV

According to supposedly leaked documents, Google is readying a new contender for the living room in Android TV, a set-top box with an easy-to-use card interface, voice controls, push notifications and more. In a report on Saturday, The Verge confirmed rumors from October that said Google was looking to rebrand Google TV under the Android moniker. The new platform, however, is said to be much different from the company’s Google TV flop and will be more in line with offerings from Roku, the Apple TV and the new Amazon Fire TV.

Every so often, some enterprising computer company will claim they’ve finally fixed the TV. They’ll talk about how they’ve turned a dumb terminal into a smart computing platform that extends your work and play to a gigantic screen. Then, we’ll watch as the idea flops because they fail to line up content deals or wind up delivering a confusing, haphazard experience. That was the story of Google TV, which became the laughing stock of the industry after Google chairman Eric Schmidt bet that it would ship on the majority of new televisions in 2012. (He was sorely wrong.) But what these companies seem to be realizing as their content deals fail is that they don’t need to “fix” TV quite yet. The proper opening salvo may simply be to put desirable content in front of people who use television the same way as ever. Enter Android TV.