Google Inc (GOOG) Just Dove into the Digital TV Pool

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one of those tech companies that understands the next frontier in digital is in the living room. Each major tech company out there is trying to find their way into as many aspects of your life as possible – especially finding ways to provide entertainment  from wherever you are. This is why there has been such a push for games and video streaming on smartphones and tablets. But these tech companies also know that there are very few nomads – we all have a home that we go to, and that home usually has one (or more) television sets. (Google keeps trying, bless its heart.)

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), however, has had some stuggles getting into the TV and video-streaming market. While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and is continuing to upgrade its Apple TV set-top box, and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been establishing itself in the living room with its Xbox franchise, Google has had a couple of failures in getting into TV. There was the very public failure of the Nexus Q, which was a black ball that was to serve as a set-top vessel for video streaming. The less-public failure was Google TV, a streaming service that was supposed to be something akin to Netflix but never could get off the ground.

So among the big three mentioned above, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been running behind the cruve. But with the latest announcement Wednesday, the company may finally have its opening and its opportunity – and for much less than an Apple TV or Xbox. While Google was revealing its next-generation Nexus 7 tablet computer at a media event Wednesday, it surprised attendees by also unveiling a new $35 widget called Chromecast, which is designed to allow smartphone and tablet users to “cast” video or music streams onto their TV sets using the HDMI slot on the set. This information comes from our friend, The Droid Guy.

The new Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) device looks like a USB flash drive in terms of size, but it seems to pack so much digital influence. It plugs into the HDMI port on a TV set and it syncs with any Android or iOS device (yes, this kind of thing will work on iPhones and iPads), and it allows for seamless streaming on a TV set. This also works on laptops that run on Mac OS X or Windows as well that have the Chrome browser. How might this work, exactly?

If you are on a Windows machine, for example, and you have Netflix on your browser so you can watch “Numb3rs,”, with the Chromecast plug hooked into the home Wi-fi network and the TV, what appears on the browser can be shown on the TV for better sound and perhaps picture quality. And if the laptop or desktop goes into sleep mode, the content that is streamed to the TV will continue streaming, uninterrupted. Oh, and an additional benefit? The playback of the content can be controlled from the original device, so there would be no requirement to use the TV remote. Users can also stream music from Pandora, Spotify or Google Play, as well as movies and TV shows. The device is said to begin selling Sunday, July 28.

What are your thoughts? Would you be interested in something like this from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)? If you are an investor like fund manager Julian Robertson (see his full equity portfolio), would you be interested in this $35 widget as a reason for investment? How many sales would you predict of this device in this quarter? Let us get your feedback in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: None