Euro OTT gets hot as Google gives boost to Google TV with Google Play content

Editor | 10-11-2012

Aiming not to lose more ground to the likes of Netflix and LOVEFiLM in the Europe OTT stakes, Goole TV is to offer content from the Google Play library to viewers in the UK, France and Germany.

Google Play is the search giant’s centre of entertainment offering music, magazines, books, movies, TV shows and apps that can be accessed over the web or with the ever increasing amounts of Android tablets or smartphones.

In addition to issues with set top box manufacturers, lack of compelling content has to date been one of the key gating factors to the rollout of Google TV, a weakness exposed by its rivals’ almost weekly addition of content to their over the top services.

Google has spent the last few months attempting to bolster the basic Google Play proposition and in September 2012 it signed a deal with Fox to make 600 films available through CinemaNow, iTunes, VUDU, PlayStation, Xbox, and Google Play and YouTube. The offerings include Prometheus, which was Fox’s first UltraViolet digital-locker enabled title that users can port to a range of devices. Weeks earlier it had begun offering TV shows such as Revenge, Parks & Recreation and Breaking Bad and a variety of movies from ABC Studios, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures.