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Three years after launching the first generation of Google TV devices, Google is now looking to rid itself of the brand and realign its smart TV platform efforts more closely with Android. The move is part admission that Google TV failed, part hope that Android will eventually find its place in the living room.

They are calling it ‘Android TV.’”

Google announced earlier this year that it would update Google TV to the latest version of Android, which would allow developers to use the same APIs available on mobile devices.

Chromecast lets your stream online content to your TV and control it via your new Nexus 7 (also introduced today, along with Android 4.3) or any Android device running version 2.3 or later

Unlike Apple's AirPlay, which can stream content directly from mobile devices to Apple TV, Chromecast pulls content from the cloud. The benefit: If the person initiating the Chromecast leaves the house, someone else can continue controlling the viewing experience with a different Cast-enabled device. It also won't drain the battery of your device.

Like most Google TV devices, it comes with a separate and overly complex remote control. The remote control for Chromecast will be your favorite mobile device (yes, it even beats your iPhone). It's very un-remote like: No special interface or buttons. Since Chromecast revolves around apps, the app remains the interface. If you know Netflix, you know how to work Chromecast.

Google will now include listings of television episodes and on-air dates in its search results.

This new data will be displayed alongside the existing information in Google’s database that already details a show’s network, cast, theme song and main characters.

change also extends to TV shows no longer in production.

or Internet-based TV to be a competitive option, it either needs to be cheaper than cable and satellite or it needs to provide the content that subscribers want in a better way.

For the companies still working on Web TV, it would mean charging less than traditional competitors for a service while paying more than traditional competitors to offer it.

for a Web TV offering to be truly Web TV, it would need to offer all the channels consumers want alongside the "over-the-top" video capabilities like Netflix and Hulu that they associate with Internet viewing.

Apple TV is reportedly developing ad-skipping technology so owners of a set-top box can watch shows commercial-free. The propsed deal with cable companies would reimburse programmers for skipped ads.

Google is really just hoping to beat Apple to the punch, despite the fact that the company already has its Apple TV streaming product on the market, according to The New York Times "Apple’s thinking… is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup."

Adoption from the major networks is "very unlikely to support any service with their linear feed that allows for commercial messages to be skipped even if they get some form of compensation," Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for WPP's GroupM, told AdAge. "This is not a viable economic model and subscribers to the system would not pay an adequate premium to compensate for it." 

ut Nascar's new page has a key new feature, which is the ability to pull in tweets related to a live event from a variety of sources. In the case of Nascar, tweets about Pocono 400 were being pulled in from drivers like Jeff Gordon as well as sports writers, and the curation was executed through an algorithm that searched for relevant content with the assistance of human editors, according to a Twitter blog post. It's further evidence of Twitter's desire to be the platform advertisers turn to when they're looking to execute promotions around major live events such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars. Last month, they announced a partnership with ESPN to create branded campaigns around tentpole sports events.

#Nascar page is the first of its kind and has a slightly different layout than the brand pages Twitter unveiled in December, which feature customizable header images and enable brands to keep a particular tweet -- often a photo or video that can auto-expand -- at the top,

You want your new definition of social TV? There you have it. It's not a useless check-in app, it's short, sometimes sweet, sometimes powerful, highly consumable content. When you marry that with TV content that shares the same characteristics, you have a bright future for quality television and its second screen.

Limited series, anthology formats, and binge viewing Netflix shows are beginning to resemble how one-offs like the Super Bowl or the Grammy's behave on the Web, where there's a groundswell of conversation for a limited period of time.

There is growing consensus that traditional media, particularly TV, need to learn lessons from this. "YouTube is beginning to behave like a market leader," noted Elisabeth Murdoch in her 2012 MacTaggart lecture. "Believe at your own risk that their platform is based on homemade videos of cats in washing machines… Brands and talent are using YouTube to create direct-to-consumer relationships. Michelle Phan is the world's most popular make-up expert with over 600 million views. Yes – that's equivalent to a global Olympic audience generated by a 22-year-old putting on Lady Gaga makeup."

I'm a professional. If you expect me to jump at the opportunity to do something for free, like you're doing me a solid? No." Perhaps the scariest part of that comment for the old media is that these twenty-somethings know Jamie Oliver best for his supermarket advertising.

Cable television offers hundreds of channels, while YouTube gives us potentially millions from a global pool. The second is that technology now provides more versatility for watching content from the internet. For copying the tips from a make-up video, you might choose to use a smartphone in the bathroom; you can watch vlogs in bed on a tablet; for longer, more stylised productions, you've still got the big screen.

Yahoo’s multimedia blogging platform Tumblr is already co-operating with Viacom to offer advertising opportunities around top Viacom TV programming, such as the MTV Movie Awards. It also recently commissioned research into its social TV engagement, positioning it as a direct competitor to Twitter.

The Voice USA runs its social TV engagement across multiple other social networks and mobile apps, including Google+, Keek, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr and YouTube, plus Facebook’s Instagram and Twitter’s Vine.

Twitter, Facebook, WeChat and Sony have all launched rival World Cup social TV services.