“Google is developing a home entertainment device, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans, in a move that would bring it more broadly into consumer electronics,” David Streitfeld and Nicole Perlroth report for The New York Times. “The device, which exists as a prototype and will eventually be sold as a branded item to consumers, is the company’s most significant venture into hardware. While the initial purpose of the device will be for streaming music, the eventual use could be much wider.”

“Larry Page, who last year took the reins of the company he co-founded, has been intent on moving into hardware,” Streitfeld and Perlroth report. “The entertainment device has been in the works for more than a year, before Google made a $12.5 billion deal to buy the handset maker Motorola Mobility, the most likely manufacturer of the device. That acquisition is likely to close next week.”

Streitfeld and Perlroth report, “News that the device was becoming a reality surfaced last week in an application the search giant filed with the Federal Communications Commission. In the application, Google said it would begin testing a device it labeled simply an ‘entertainment device.’ The device will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and, as Google noted in the application, it will ‘connect to other home electronics equipment.’ The application, which was first reported by the tech Web site GigaOM, said Google would test the device for stability in employees’ homes through the summer.”

“Google’s larger goal, a person closely tied to the project said, was to connect everything in the home to the Internet, including light bulbs, speakers and TV sets,” Streitfeld and Perlroth report. “The perils of not having full control of the design and manufacturing of a device became apparent with Google TV, which was codeveloped in 2010 by Google, Sony, Intel and Logitech. Reviewers hated it and the public scorned it. Guerrino De Luca, chief executive of Logitech has acknowledged publicly that the Google TV was ‘a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Last year we were told by many analysts and pundits that Google’s “most significant venture into hardware” was Google TV.

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