Why Google Is Getting Into Entertainment: Your Data

Everyone is suggesting that Google is busy designing and testing its own-branded hardware. This is fascinating on a number of levels, but one question about the rumor really stands out: Why? Google goes out of its way to appear to be serving the public, all the while gathering a precious resource it uses to earn its billions: Data. Ultimately this data from Google TV, from Google+, from Google Voice, from YouTube, from search, from Gmail and basically every other Google product turns into money for Google via advertising space. This space is sold to advertising partners on the understanding that a particular brand message is very precisely targeted at its potential market in a way that few other technologies can match, and so that every ad dollar spent is more efficiently employed. Basically Google wants to be off your desk, out of your phone pocket, and into your home. Because that's where even more advertising dollars can be found.