Google Brings Internet of the Future, TV of the Past to Austin

When it comes to the TV part of Fiber, Google is acting just like any other pay TV company — you give it a bunch of money, and it gives you a bunch of channels, no matter which ones you actually watch.

That’s the bundle concept that ties together the entire TV Industrial Complex, and while lots of people are always talking about breaking the bundle, no one’s done it yet. And Google doesn’t seem interested in trying to do it. Google is annoyingly vague about the TV channels it will have in Austin (and any other details about its offering). But it’s reasonable to assume that it’s going to look a lot like the ones it offers in Kansas City. At least some of the programmers it works with in Kansas City have deals that will allow Google to roll over the same offering into new territories, industry executives say. And there’s no reason for the channels not to support the move. Google gives the cable programmers what they want, which means deals to take all of their networks, at rates that are as least as high as the ones they negotiated with AT&T and Verizon, the last two big guys to enter the pay TV world.