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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

Milestones in Google branding:

2010-05-20: Google introduces Google TV at Google I/O (https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-tv... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASZbArr7vdI)

2014-06-24: Google introduces Android TV at Google I/O (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/introducin... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dCUPeyhag), a rebranding of Google TV

2017-02-28: Google introduces YouTube TV (https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/finally-live-tv-made-fo...)

2020-09-30: Google introduces Google TV, which might be a rebranding of Android TV back to Google TV, but I'm not sure.

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Highly relevant comic (although it's quite outdated now)

https://bonkersworld.net/naming-dartboard

Heh, that’s cute. And it still seems reasonably close to reality - the only thing I think it’s missing OTOH is Google One.

Apple has Books, Pay, Wallet, Store, App Store, One, and TV. All they’re missing is Cast and Go!

It still beats hardware naming schemes: MAG, MPG and MEG for MSI and then a string of "pro" "extreme" "enhanced" and characters like "+" lobbed on to various words, usually in combination ... Do I want MAG pro extreme+ or MPG enhanced pro 2?

And then there's Intel which literally reused numbers for its Xeon series so you have to check the chipset/socket type otherwise you could be 10 years off.

And then there's RAM where vendors will put numbers like "3600" after say 2400Mhz RAM because it's that product's series number but knows full well that it's also a common clockspeed. You'd think they're just trying to trick you and do an upsell to fools but sometimes they also go the other way as well. I don't think they realize how confusing it is

So yeah, Google isn't doing that bad

Also the Pixelbook Go - whoever named that must’ve been throwing two darts at the same time!

"One" is always the moment of self-realisation. "We have all these complex services, lets ... err ... try to make them look coherent by putting them under the "One" brand".

Yes but Apple has one of each google has multiple of each.

True. But Apple TV/Apple TV+ are cutting it pretty close.

But I think that is a temporary thing - I don't think Apple TV is going to be long term product - TVs are too smart now

TVs may be “smart” but they are becomingly increasingly user-hostile with regard to tracking and force-feeding advertisements. I want to have the option of using devices that respects my privacy. Hopefully, I’m not alone and there continues to be a market demand for sudh user-friendly products.

>TVs are too smart now

This is why I’m so reluctant to look into modern TVs. The quality on my mid-range 2014 Sony is pretty average at best by today’s standards, but at least it’s not smart enough to know what I’m watching and has no network connectivity.

This also means I can’t easily control it with a smartphone without something like Logitech Harmony which is just awful in UX, but still… it can’t track what I’m doing on the TV either.

Do you think they are going to stop making them, or do you see them entering the smart TV market with their own TV?

No they won’t this is a low margin market. They will just offer Apps.

1) Phones were a low margin market. Laptops are the lowest of margins. Desktops too. Apple doesn't care about what the current margin of a market is because it slaps a premium on it to reach the margin its looking for.

2) Apple does not create apps for other platforms as a source of profit. They have never done that. To guess that they would do that now is a gigantic leap in logic.

Google has Google One but currently it's only Cloud Storage and some PlayStore benefits. In few years, you could expect few more google services in it.

> Google has Google One but currently it's only Cloud Storage and some PlayStore benefits.

And paid support for all Google consumer services.

I feel like you could add “Nest” as a row soon, and it would be up-to-date

That's hilarious. Who's the other speaker?

Sundar Pichai probably. Google's CEO.

I meant the other, other speaker. The one saying "Who cares? Your turn, Sundar"

A fictional google executive

Eric Schmidt.

Needs a stray dart on just the heading "Go" :)

They forgot to put music on that board

Google TV is a launcher for Android TV, so far as I can tell. Android TV is not being rebranded, as it is the OS - but Google TV is the "Google Experience" on Android TV.

To make this more complicated/interesting - Google renamed the Play Movies and TV app to "Google TV." I'm guessing so you can have Google TV on Google TV?

Will the Play Movies app on my existing Android TV open the Google TV launcher like shown off here, or is it still just a browser for the content I already have?

Is the change to Android TV just that this app becomes the launcher?

I swear I've read this comment like five times, because you seem to actually know what's going on... but it's left me only more confused.

What is a launcher?

If Android TV is an OS, then what is a launcher for an OS?

And I guess you're as confused as I am as to also what this has to do with the previous Play Movies and TV app.

I don’t know if Google TV is just a launcher, but I can answer the question "what is a launcher?"

On Android systems, a launcher is the home screen plus a little more. iPhone doesn’t have this concept as there's only one "launcher": the home screen. On android, however, you can install apps to radically change your home screen layout. Some are terminals, some are just A-Z lists of your apps, etc. A launcher on Android TV would be more significant because it would probably include movies, shows, and music instead of just apps.

The existing Android TV launcher will show movies, shows and other content. Apps can put recommendations on the home screen for the content they offer.

Having been a prolific Android TV user for years, this appears to be just yet another reskin. No new functionality.

Thanks for the reminder about why I don’t use Android. I definitely don’t want to be screwing with my phone more than I already do.

You don’t have to, it’s completely optional.

For my phone I just prefer fewer things to mess with in general, and a smaller API surface, since I don’t want to be tweaking and untweaking shit on a device which is already so unergonomic. On my desktop I prefer Windows and Linux to mess with stuff.

Once again, you don't have to. The phone out of the box comes with default launcher which is completely functional.

Then you don't need to do anything. Just use the default.

Time travel with me back to 1993 for a moment...

DOS is your Operating System. You can use Windows 3.11, GeoWorks, or DeskMate as your Application Launcher.

What about Microsoft Bob, can I use that?

Sure, on the way there we can stop in '95 to pick up a copy of Bob... but you are on your own for getting it working.

If you are Bill Gates you find your wife in the process of creating Bob.

I just looked and I was very disappointed to find Bill doesn't have a son named Robert. :/

You don't even have to travel that far. Even on Windows10 you can install different shells(Cairo, bb4win, classic shell, etc).

Just so you know, classic shell is deprecated.

Open shell [0] is the up to date one.

[0] https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/

A launcher for Android is somewhat similar to a desktop environment on Linux.

A launcher on Android is an app that starts other apps. The launcher app is displayed when you click on the Home button.

The same could be said about Apple TV (the device, software) and Apple TV+ (the streaming service).

Apple decided Intel's process naming scheme was a good idea.

I came here to make some joke about how Intel renaming the 7980XE to the 9980XE would be like re-releasing the iPhone 5 as an iPhone 7... but then I realized they kind of did that. Even tacked on some sort of "Edition" tag at the end.

For Android, a launcher is a special type of application that is in charge of launching other applications.

If you search for "popular launchers" you should be able to find some examples

No wonder you're confused, the website is a bit unclear until the end.

It's just like a Chromecast (HDMI dongle), but running Android TV.

The closest comparable thing may be Nvidia's Shield.

I thought it was running google tv. With Android tv deprecated.

It is running "Google TV," but "Google TV" runs on the "Android TV" operating system variant of "Android"

> What is a launcher?

“Launcher” is the Android term for a graphical shell, the thing from which you launch apps.

> To make this more complicated/interesting - Google renamed the Play Movies and TV app to "Google TV." I'm guessing so you can have Google TV on Google TV?

The e-mail I got from Google specifically mentioned that Google Play Movies and TV on Android mobile devices was being renamed (and in US only), so maybe it is still Google Play Movies on Android TV? It would still be weird, though, so who knows...

Google is somehow worse than Microsoft at naming

Google has become worse than Microsoft.

GMail, GMaps, and GDocs, were simple and to the point. Then institutional rot happened.

I’d argue they didn’t face an existential threat. Causing the employees to stop focusing on the business.

Same thing that brought down intel.

Like intel (of the past). You can coast and the money will keep coming in. Up until it doesn’t.

Almost no one remembers and it's safe to forget previous Google TV. Meanwhile Xbox Series X/S is confusing and Xbox / Xbox 360 / Xbox One shouldn't be forgotten. So MS is worse for now.

I'm assuming parent was alluding to the "Live!" Windows days, where internet-enabled products suddenly became "{Product} Live!"

Eventually, everything of consequence ended up with the suffix, and they finally dropped it.

But say what you want about Microsoft. Somewhere out there there's a publicly accessible doc describing the naming. And probably a video too. *

* https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/videos/micr...

I raise you .net Live!

https://github.com/Azure-Samples/media-services-dotnet-live-...

My mind is blown. 365 degrees.

Microsoft had terrible naming for Windows and Xbox products.

On the cloud side, Azure has way better service/product names than AWS: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/aws-prof...

Not much better than watching Apple TV+ in Apple TV app on an Apple TV.

Can I run Google TV on any capable android device? Like an old phone plugged into a USB dock with an HDMI out?

> Can I run Google TV on any capable android device?

The promo talks about Google TV on mobile Android, but I gather that’s a reskin of the Play Movies and TV app, not the Chromecast/SmartTV launcher experience.

But, is that it actually it? The linked page shows a "Get it now" (for your phone) link which points to the Google Play Movies & TV app for me..

(And, the sites screenshots vs the play store screenshots differ - suggesting it hasn't rolled out to the region I'm in yet...)

There must be something deeper changing, because at the bottom of the page they say, emphasis mine, "Coming soon to FUTURE smart TVs."

Thank you. Can I put on the phone with my parents so you can you explain this to them? Also, make sure to mention "Chromecast" as well.

Ah, I see Google is copying the Apple TV naming strategy.

It took me quite a while to understand that this device is actually something I wanted. Their marketing is terrible and I had to read an article on another site to actually decipher the code words.

It's not a Chromecast, as we used to understand them - it's a full Android TV device with a new skin/launcher called Google TV.

It is, essentially, an updated Nexus Player, a competitor to the Nvidia shield and cheaper no-name android stick devices. One can hope it will be easily rooted, thus allowing for some interesting potential uses.

I think, it is an industry wide problem

https://dcurt.is/apple-tv-all-the-way-down

>Google Play Movies & TV is now Google TV but it’s not the same Google TV that runs on Android TV on the new Chromecast, it’s an app

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/30/21492549/google-tv-app-pl...

i want a YouTube RED original series, where they just have the YouTube RED, YouTube TV, and Google TV product managers engage in a bareknuckle octagon brawl as a metaphor for internal Google PM battles to become the emperor and autocrat of all the googleproductmanagers

Halfway through the season they all change costume and put on deeper voices, but you can tell it's the same character underneath.

3/4 through the season, the producers kill off the most popular character. No reason is given.

Actually it's two smaller managers, with one standing on the other's shoulders, in a trenchcoat.

YouTube Red was rebranded to YouTube Premium a while ago.

I keep waiting for Google to rebrand Google Books to Google Reader just to troll people

Google needs a marketing department. Badly! I mean, all that insanely cool technology and even the geeks on HN are confused how to use it.

Well, they still haven't announced Play TV and Chrome TV, so...

Duo Streaming, Television for Hangouts

> Play TV

Play Movies & TV (the Android app and service for purchased video content), has been around for a while, but it's just been rebranded as Google TV.

> Google introduces Google TV, which might be a rebranding of Android TV back to Google TV

It seems to be not quite exactly that, Android TV seems to still be an active brand; Google TV is a new UI on top of Android TV. OTOH, since it implies Android TV, once all new devices with Android TV are also using the Google TV interface, I'd expect Android TV to stop being an actively-used brand.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.androidcentral.com/what-goo...

Waiting for Google TV+

[Replying to myself]

Oops, got the first link wrong on Android TV. Should have been this: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2014/06/android-tv...

Chromecast milestones should be in this list as well, just to add to the chaos.

The real question I have is...did some googler get a promotion for shipping something when it was only one of these renames? Or is this how the marketing people "ship" things?

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