Google Rant

 The reason I love Google is also the reason I hate them.  I love the vast array of products they offer that sync together seamlessly.  I hate when they have things that don't mesh like everything else.  For instance, Google TV and Google Music.  Two products that are a match made in heaven.  I have all this music that I spent 4 days uploading to the cloud so that I can access it anywhere.  Anywhere except for my Google TV.     The sad part is that it lets you go to the page... but locks up every time you try and play something.  Google Music on Android is a whole other story.  It works great.  Sure its a little slow at times, but it works as it should.

Really most of my frustration with Google these days revolves around Google TV.  I want it to be awesome more than any other else they make.  So far though, its been the biggest letdown.  Here's a rundown why:

-Poor integration with Tivo.  This is number one with a bullet for me.  While it can control the Tivo and tell you whats on, it does it all by IR.  It won't connect to it over the network.  So it has no idea what you've recorded and the control is wonky at best.  So much wasted potential so far.

-Poor integration with other Google products.
Google Music?  No!
Marketplace movies?  No!
Message notification for Gmail?  No!
Video chat to Google Talk?  No!
Bookmark sync between desktop Chrome and Google TV Chrome?  No!
Google Voice?  No texting, no caller ID, no voicemail notification, no calling capability, no nothing!
Some of this wouldn't be so bad if the built in Chrome browser wasn't so damn slow.

-Super poor network resource support.  It cant open a network share.  You're only option is to view content from a DNLA server.  Its format support is pretty trashy at best.  It couldn't search the DNLA server to save its life.

-No Quicktime support.  I wouldn't care about this, but a lot of things on it link to trailers in Quicktime format.

-Logitech's own Harmony remotes don't work as well with it as they should.  While it will control the Google TV or the Tivo, I can't get it to do both at the same time.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong here... but come the F on!  Why can't the Revue be a basestation for the Harmony RF remotes?

-No PS3 control.  How hard would it have been to include a bluetooth transceiver?  Being able to control the PS3 and type with the keyboard would of been amazing.

-No Apps.  Apps could of been the saving grace for most of these problems.  They could of added the functionality that Android 2.1 and the first gen hardware is missing.

-Its just plain buggy.  At least my Revue has been so far.  While watching videos through the Queue menu the play/pause/ff/rr keys control Pandora for some reason... Also it locks up way more than something in the living room should.

I think Google realized that it jumped the gun with Google TV.  I have faith that the Google TV 2.0 "reboot" will fix most if not all of the issues I have with it.  Hopefully that comes sooner than later though.

-Sean