Logitech Acknowledges Google TV Set-Top Box a 'Big Mistake'
Google made waves last year for its introduction of Google TV, new software intended to integrate the Internet with television content and revolutionize the TV-watching experience. One of the key hardware launch partners for Google TV was Logitech, which offered its "Revue" set-top box for Google TV at a price of $299.

Google TV failed to catch on with consumers, and by July of this year Logitech had slashed pricing on the Revue box to just $99 and taken an accounting charge on the loss related to the below-cost sale price. The lack of consumer interest in Google TV reminded observers of comments made by Steve Jobs just after Google's announcement of its Google TV project.
Subsidized set-top boxes have squashed innovation because no one wants to pay for separate boxes...ask TiVo, Roku, us, Google in a few months. The set-top box needs to be torn up and redesigned to get people things they way they want them. And there's no go-to-market strategy for that. With the iPhone, and now the iPad, we could partner with carriers, but television is very balkanized...everything is local.
Just two weeks ago, Google announced a significant update to the Google TV platform, but Logitech apparently has no interest in being burned twice, as The Verge reports that the company has sworn off any further Google TV work and acknowledged that the original effort was "a big mistake". According to Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca:
To make the long story short, we thought we had invented [sliced] bread and we just made them. [We made a commitment to] just build a lot because we expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes [at] $300 [...] that was a big mistake.
De Luca notes that Logitech "executed a full scale launch with a beta product", a decision that resulted in a $100 million loss for the company when consumer demand failed to meet expectations. De Luca admits that Google TV may yet have success in the market but that any such developments are some time away and will not involve Logitech.
Google is of course only one of the companies seeking to change the way users interact with and experience television. Apple's current Apple TV set-top box primarily serves to integrate iTunes Store content with television sets, but the company is said to be working on a revolutionary new Siri-based interface for an actual television set product that could launch by 2013. And Sony has also acknowledged its efforts in the field, seeing the need to step up and address Apple's success so far with its iTunes ecosystem as well its future television plans.
Popular Stories
2026 could be a bumper year for Apple's Mac lineup, with the company expected to announce as many as four separate MacBook launches. Rumors suggest Apple will court both ends of the consumer spectrum, with more affordable options for students and feature-rich premium lines for users that seek the highest specifications from a laptop.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
...
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
In a statement shared with CNBC today, Apple confirmed that Google Gemini will power the next-generation version of Siri that is slated to launch later this year.
"After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we're excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users," the statement...
Elon Musk today expressed concern about Apple and Google partnering on a more personalized version of Siri powered by Google's generative AI platform Gemini.
"This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that [they] also have Android and Chrome," wrote Musk, in a post on X.
Musk serves as CEO of xAI, the company behind Gemini competitor Grok.
It is unlikely...
Apple today seeded the second beta of iOS 26.3, nearly a month after the first beta. So far, the update includes a couple of new features for iPhones.
iOS 15.3 through iOS 18.3 were all released in late January over the years, so it is thereby likely that iOS 26.3 will be released towards the end of this month as well. The update is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer.
Below,...
The Unicode Consortium has published a draft list of emoji that could come to smartphones and other devices in the future. The list shared by Emojipedia outlines 19 emoji candidates under consideration for Emoji 18.0, which is expected to be finalized in September 2026.
Among the proposed additions are a squinting face emoji, left- and right-pointing thumb gestures, a pickle, a lighthouse, a ...
Apple and Google today announced that Google Gemini will help power not only a more personalized version of Siri, but a range of future Apple Intelligence features.
"Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," the companies said, in a statement. "These...
iOS 26.3 will likely be released to the public later this month, but it appears that Apple is preparing to push out another software update in the interim.
Apple's software engineers have started testing iOS 26.2.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. The update will likely be released at some point this week or next week.
...