Google and Partners Seek TV Foothold

Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.

The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors.

The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.

Some existing televisions and set-top boxes offer access to Web content, but the choice of sites is limited. Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.

Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer.

The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.

The project, which has been under way for several months, was described by people with knowledge of it. They requested anonymity because the partners were not allowed to speak publicly at this point, and details remained under negotiation.

Spokesmen for Google, Intel and Logitech declined to comment. A Sony spokesman said he was not familiar with the project. The companies appear to be hiring for Android-related jobs. Intel, for example, has listed jobs for senior application engineers with Android programming experience who can help extend Intel’s technology “from PC screen to mobile screen and TV screen.” Logitech also has several job listings for Android developers, including a position for an “embedded software engineer” with experience building “audio and video products based on the Android platform.”

Jacob Hsu, chief executive of Symbio, a contract engineering firm that does work for consumer electronics companies, said there was rising interest in set-top box technology among the traditional computing players. “The boxes are just getting more and more powerful, so there’s more you can do with them,” he said.

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. Google wants to aggressively ensure that its services, in particular its search and advertising systems, play a central role.

“Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there,” said one of the people with knowledge of the project.

Based on Google’s Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel’s Atom chips.

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How to to prevent tracking by Google

Have you heard about the proxy service?

Yes, definitely, most of you have been using it too.

Proxy service allows us to enters in some other websites without intimating Google as we know that Google knows everything about you and your work as well. Google even know what you are doing, searching, investigating, communicating. Besides all these things, Google even knows your friends and family and what you’ve ever sent or received at gmail, whether you’ve deleted it or not. In short, he has an eye on you and tracks everything. Now, you cannot hide anything from Google but now special kind of anonymizing proxy service has been introduced i.e. GoogleSharing which is designed for a very specific threat. If you doesn't want Google to know anything about you and your activities then this GoogleSharing proxy service ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent Google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. Isn't it an interesting one!

Actually, GoogleSharing is a kind of so called proxy service but it is not a full proxy service rather something designed exclusively for your communication with Google. Their system is totally transparent, and works as a normal flow that you exactly do. It is the same way working for you. Let me explain very clearly, that it actually mixes the requests of many different users together in such a way that Google cannot understand and will not know what is going on and from where the data is coming. It provide a system that will prevent Google from collecting information about you from services which don’t require a login and make this system completely transparent to the user. There is no special websites or change to your work flow. It just leaves your non-Google traffic completely untouched, unredirected, and unaffected.

Now you might be thinking how it works. The system consists of a custom proxy and a Firefox Addon and works by generating a pool of GoogleSharing identities, and use the cookie issued by Google and an arbitrary User-Agent for one of several popular browsers. This way Google didn't even know and understand what is coming from whom. The Firefox Addon watches for requests to Google services from your browser and when enabled will transparently redirect all of them but some things cannot be done like Gmail. You cannot anonymize these services, and it requires cookies that are pegged to your browser. If you log into your GMail account, it is obviously you. So naturally, they recommend switching to something other than GMail or Checkout, but if you must use things like GMail or Google Checkout, it should work seamlessly for you with GoogleSharing enabled that traffic just won't go through GoogleSharing. But except this, using GoogleSharing you can request all identifying information freely as while enabling it is replaced with the information from a GoogleSharing identity and not yours. This is only the tool that can flummox Google’s behavioral tracking system.

Let you know that all requests to a GoogleSharing proxy are sent via HTTPS. These eventually have to be proxied out as HTTP from GoogleSharing to Google, but your traffic is encrypted on the first path. So if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, then this service is great to use. Only few limitations they have that it does not proxy Chat, GMail, Checkout, Sites, Docs, Photos, Calendar, Reader, or Health.

I have used it and believe me the only thing that they have is their reputations. So you can use it without any hesitation which I feel is fairly strong in the area where you want privacy. However, they also made the GoogleSharing proxy code available, and you can easily change the GoogleSharing proxy settings in the Firefox Addon. So if you don't trust, hopefully you can find someone that you do trust and one more thing that immediately sensitive information like login credentials or cookies are never transmitted through a GoogleSharing proxy and let you clear one very important thing Google cookies are actually filtered by the GoogleSharing Firefox Addon before your request is transmitted to the proxy. So there should be no chance of any login credentials leaking from your browser. You can use them, the traffic just won't be transmitted through the GoogleSharing proxy, and thus will not be anonymized and you don't need to worry about your login credentials or any other identifying information showing up in someone else's request.

Enjoy!!