Advertisers started with traditional media like newspapers, TV, and magazines. As the internet became a more important piece of the daily lives of consumers, advertiser started flocking to online advertisements. 

Today online advertising is a massive moneymaker with Google sitting at the top of the heap. As the internet moves to other platforms like mobile phones and TVs, Google is making moves to ensure that its advertising program is ready. There are a number of devices and platforms that bring internet content to the TV screen in homes around the world. The type of content that can be accessed in the living room varies greatly and includes streaming move rentals, TV shows, and social networks.

Google, Intel and Sony are all teaming up on a push for a new set top box called Google TV reports the New York Times. Google TV is looking to bring internet content to the TV via set top boxes and integration directly into TVs.

Google is clearly looking to get its foot in the door in the market so it can reap the money to be earned form more advertising viewers. Sony will benefit by getting TVs with the advanced internet access functionality into homes first. The hardware to make the magic happen will be the popular line of Intel Atom processors.

Google and its partners are looking to Logitech for accessories to go with the Google TV system. Logitech is reportedly making a new remote control for Google TV that has a small keyboard built-in. Logitech already makes one of the best selling lines of universal remotes around with its Harmony universal remote controls.

Google TV will run the Android operating system and the browser used will of course be Chrome. The service will reportedly be open to outside developers with Google providing a SDK in an attempt to get developers to adopt the Google TV platform and design applications for it. People with knowledge of Google TV tell the NYT that the project has been going for months. Google is said to be running a limited test of the service with Dish Network already. Reuters reports that Google, Intel, and Sony offered no comment on the project.

One person close to the project told the NYT, "Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there."

There are already a number of devices on the market that are capable of providing access to web content in the living room. In 2008, Intel announced the development of a new SoC that promised to bring internet to the TV screen and the Yahoo Widget channel was the first service to use the SoC. The Yahoo Widget channel provides users small applications that run at the bottom of a TV screen providing things like weather and sports scores.

Apple has its Apple TV device, which has not been successful. More recently, Netflix has been teaming up with several makers of game consoles and set top boxes to provide access to its streaming movie rentals. One of the first dedicated boxes for the TV that could stream Netflix was the Netflix Player from Roku.