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Will Google come out with an operating system for television — something like Android, its Googlephone OS, but for set-top boxes? Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch thinks so. It's likely that Google wants to do this — but unlikely that it will succeed. Why has TiVo struggled? Because consumers, by and large, don't pay for their set-top boxes. Instead, they rent them from cable companies, or get them free from satellite-TV providers in exchange for signing up for service. The cost of hardware is disguised in the monthly service fee. Google may come up with an Android for television, but will it matter? Unlikely. Cable and telephone companies saw Google profit massively off the Internet connections they sold. Would they be foolish enough to let Google sneak its way into the television business with set-top software as a Trojan horse? No. Microsoft, which is plotting to turn its Xbox videogame console into a set-top box, has a much better shot.