Google TV takes a break from its regular schedule

Google has asked its corporate partners in the company’s television venture to delay the introduction of products supporting the new broadcasting platform, according to the New York Times. The delay gives short notice to Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, and other companies planning to debut Google-TV-powered devices at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The platform’s operating system, a mashup of Google’s web browser, Chrome, and the Android mobile OS, has withered in reviews. Google has also found cable providers to be fickle partners; Viacom and other producers have proven reluctant to offer their content to the new service. With stiff competition from Boxee, Roku, and Apple, Google is having a hard time finding its footing in the nascent Internet TV market. And yet the market as a whole, caught as it is between emergent and legacy media, has yet to really take off; there’s plenty of time for the search giant to find its way. For many of us, of course, Google TV would seem to exist already: we call it the Internet.