What happened to the large announcements of new Google TV based flat panel TVs at CES 2011? In the weeks up to CES rumors said that most TV manufacturers had a Google TV planned for introduction in 2011 but the CES floors were empty. Here's the explanation. 

What happened to Google TV at CES 2011?
Google TV is one of the candidates for tomorrow's TV platform. The interface combines the regular TV channels with video content from the Internet, melted together with Google’s search interface.

Sony was the first manufacturer to release a flat panel TV with Google TV and Logitech launched an external box. Before CES 2011 in Las Vegas Bloomberg and New York Times reported that Google TV was planned for release on Samsung’s TVs, Toshiba’s TV and on Vizio’s TV. Only US based Vizio actually unveiled TVs with Google. 


Sony’s Google TV

But why?

Google TV had a lukewarm reception. It was not the big revolution that everyone had hoped for, and the users reported a number of bugs and shortcomings. Things didn’t exactly improve when some of the major TV broadcasters started blocking access to their internet video content through Google TV devices.


Google TV 

Google hesitated right before CES
Just before CES rumors started, saying that Google had asked the TV manufacturers to postpone the launch of their already planned Google-based flat panel TVs. What actually happened behind the scenes is hard to say but according to the same rumors Google wants to develop a Google TV 2.0 platform before a major roll-out.

It seems that the TV manufacturers listened and postponed their plans. No major Google TV launches were announced and only US based Vizio mentioned some TVs with Google TV, although it was only mentioned briefly in the specifications list.

The future of Google TV?
Google is still waiting for that huge breakthrough, and they might be able to improve things with the Google TV 2.0. With their current version it seems that there’s a lot of work to be done.

No TV manufacturers have mentioned a European Google TV version so far and those who talk about it say that the EU countries will have to wait at least until 2012. After all, it seems that Google is hesitant to expand their focus to other regions at the moment.

If you want to learn more about the current Internet-in-TV systems in the different TV manufacturers’ TVs see our Best of CES 2011 article.