CNN/ Business 2.0 have asked a couple of people to predict the future of Google, and there have already been rumors of Google entering the PVR market, but I found this section particularly interesting:

Some say it began with the launch of Google News, the company’s first media aggregation site, in 2002. Others point to Google Book Search, completed in 2007 despite cries of foul play from the publishing industry.[1] But those were just trial runs. Google took its first real step toward media dominance in 2008, when it bought an obscure cable network for $3 billion and transformed it into Google TV.[2] The library of video content the company had been archiving for years was now searchable via remote control. Viewers could choose any show they wanted from the history of TV; all they had to do in return was sit through just one commercial before each show, and then vote with their remotes on how relevant they found the ad.

Since viewers had to enter their Google IDs–the same ones they used for Gmail and other premium services–the company had already compiled a rich history of their searching and surfing habits.[3] If you spent a lot of time looking at cars on eBay, for example, you’d be shown automotive ads the next time you watched Google TV. Between 70 and 80 percent of the revenue from each ad went to the content provider, just as it had on the Web.

Google TV was an instant hit; advertisers, copyright owners, and cable customers all clamored for more. (One of the first casualties was a company called TiVo, which offered a hard-disc TV-recording service that Google’s vast remote archive now made redundant.) Searches, ads, and Google TV schedules became more relevant every month. Consumers loved it.

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