Chipset manufacturers love the app-based paradigm because they can retain intellectual propery rights over more functions of their chips, selling separate licenses to integrators (DRM, video/audio codecs, HW acceleration). Big media companies also embrace the app-based paradigm because they still believe it can help them reduce piracy, as opposed to delivering content via open source browser standards. And hardware integrators such as the ones that manufacture OTT set-top boxes or smart TVs also adhere to the same paradigm, because they mistakenly think it will give greater power for their platforms.

And who is the one loosing? The consumer. To make a simple comparison, can you imagine what the Internet would have been if the consumers had been forced to download and install an app for each website they wanted to access? Anyone wanting to read this blog, for instance, would have been forced to download and install a “Gigaom App”. And anyone wanting to read any of the external links of the same blog would have been forced to install another “X App” too.

But what’s even more dangerous is that the key element that holds the concept of what the Internet is today would have never existed: search capability. The consumers who had the “Gigaom App” installed would have been able to search -but only within this particular content provider network.

It’s almost impossible to imagine that the Internet could have become what it is today without the role of browsers and cross-compliant standards like HTML.

This is directly related to Adobe’s latest moves, and also to how big media companies have turned their backs on GoogleTV, because it shows how some traditional market dominators are afraid of loosing control over the consumer.

Adobe realized that if they continued to promote the browser-based paradigm (like they continuously did since their partnership with GoogleTV was announced), the paradigm would one day, inevitably, transition to an open source, cross-compliant standard, like HTML5. Think of all the video websites that are either evaluating HTML5 as an alternative to Flash, or that have completely dropped Flash support. So instead, Adobe now claims that “the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience”. The application approach is simply a closed one, where there is little or no cross-compliant standard.

GoogleTV was actually the first OTT project to seriously consider the role of a web-browser for its platform, allowing the consumer to freely choose the content, and even providing an open-source SDK to build channels optimized for OTT, not only compatible with GoogleTV, but with any HTML5 compliant browser. Without a cross-compliant browser experience, and with the burden of forcing the consumer to download and install a stand-alone application per each content provider, the OTT or “connected TV” market will remain as it is today: a highly fragmented technology that fails to promote the creation of new and innovative content (just think what the big players like Netflix, Amazon or Hulu are providing in terms of content: exactly the same that is broadcasted through traditional networks).

The role of a cross-compliant web browser is extremely important for the evolution of OTT television, and the latest Adobe’s announcement should simply force us to question: who needs Flash anyway? Hopefully other manufacturers with more vision than Logitech will understand the importance of the GoogleTV project for the long term, and Google itself will continue to improve the integration between Chrome and Android, replacing Flash with HTML5 + HLS.

“The digital home is a huge step for Flash and it represents an amazing new screen for developers and content creators to bring rich interactive content to the TV.”

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/flash_player_101_on_google_tv.html

And now that GoogleTV does have a solid alternative, and it’s actually the same alternative that Apple used from the beginning (and probably an alternative other vendors will use too), Adobe states:

“However we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience”

Perhaps we should read between the lines… Adobe is basically saying: if our Flash platform is the only available option, then the future of connected TVs is Flash; if an alternative to Flash (specially one created by Apple) comes in place, then Flash is dead, the browser for connected TVs is dead, and we should all start developing apps instead -using Adobe AIR, of course!