The digital lawn has become less clear cut. Time was that BSkyB was a TV broadcaster, BT a telecom company and Google a search engine. This month has seen announcements from BSkyB that it’s moving into BT territory, offering broadband internet access, and unbundling BT from the local loop as it builds up a network to ultimately offer TV services over the net. It also announced its purchase of Easynet.
Then BT revealed more details of its move into TV broadcasting, with its plan to offer an internet broadband TV service in combination with Freeview.
Now, it looks as if the one time state monopoly will be moving in on Google’s turf too. According to the Business paper the company is developing a search engine for Internet TV. BT says that its engine will focus on video and audio content, whereas Google is more relevant to text and images. But, of course, Google has its own plans in that direction too.
It does seem to us, that search engines for TV content will replace the TV broadcasters as the TV channels of the future. Video content will be available from new style web sites, and the means to access them will be the next generation search engines. People won’t watch BBC or ITV out of habit, they will watch Google or the equivalent service from Yahoo, Microsoft BT or any one of a host of would be players in the field- and right now the turf is only just being laid.
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