Rumor: Google to announce Android TV at June I/O

Google is rumored to be planning to announce its Android TV television software during a presentation at I/O in June. The software should follow Google TV and emphasize simple operation.

GigaOm reports this on the basis of unnamed sources. According to the site, Google has planned to announce Android TV at the developer meeting I/O, which will be held on June 25 and 26. Android TV can, as the name suggests, be used for smart televisions, but it is still unclear which TV manufacturers are interested. This may become clear during the presentation at I/O.

Google would like to keep the interface of Android TV simple, according to GigaOm. It has developed Pano for this, a concept in which content is displayed in a kind of map structure that can be scrolled through horizontally. Google would like to put emphasis on launching content quickly. That is something that also came out in previous rumors about Android TV; The Verge reported last month that Google is working on television software and also provided details about the user interface and functionality.

According to the rumors, Google will bring its own content services such as YouTube, Play Movies and the chat service Hangouts to Android TV, but multimedia services such as Hulu and Netflix may also release apps. Google would also like to build in voice control and notifications, whereby the latter should be kept to a minimum so that users are not constantly disturbed.

Android TV seems to be the successor to the less successful Google TV. The software for smart TVs was criticized by manufacturers and was ultimately hardly used. Incidentally, Google TV is also based on the Android operating system.