Thursday, April 27, 2006

I've long suspected that the television as we've known it is devolving into a quaint artifact of the 20th century, destined to be supplanted by computers in every way, and in every price range. This unflattering Apr. 26 review by Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg of the newly unveiled Yahoo Go! for TV service only reinforces my suspicion.

Yahoo describes Go! as: "a suite of products and services that lets you get the information and content that is important to you on a variety of devices." The TV version of Go! allows users to "access your own pictures from Yahoo! Photos, watch the latest movie trailers, listen to a full library of music from LAUNCHcast, view your favorite music videos in stereo, and more."

I can see the value of Go! offerings for mobile phones and PDAs, which are truly interactive devices -- but for a playback-only device with limited input capabilities like a TV? Even though this service is free, I doubt it will gain much traction.

Also, Yahoo is late to the game. Gartenberg writes: "What I don't understand is why Yahoo is spending the time and effort to do this. Microsoft's already much further ahead (from what I've seen of the download) and offers much better out of the box experience. There's no reason that Yahoo can't offer the unique services it brings to the table, like Yahoo Photos or Music via the MCE interface. This is one of those things where it just doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel."

Nor does it make sense to reinvent the buggy whip, I think.

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