Search giants court TiVo | CNET News.com

CNET News.com reports that Google and Yahoo are each having discussions with TIVO. TIVO has long talked about becoming the Google of TV. Clearly, TIVO is making the moves to incorporate search into the video world. With IPTV on the verge of taking off, search capacity becomes all the more important.

The Google mission is to organize the worlds information and Yahoo has made major investments to show that they plan to be one of the internet media kings.

Humax announced a PVR today that has built-in IPTV coding. Of course the MSFT Windows Media software was designed to make MSFT a part of the new TV world.

I predict 2006 to be the big year for IPTV with a number of products being introduced this year. TIVO was on the death watch only a few months ago. The stock has made up a lot of ground in the past few weeks. The stock is very strong when you consider the progress in a tough market.

My family owns TIVO and we plan to ride this one a long way. The deals are being made. The patents are protecting the company. The CNET talks about the possibility of Google or Yahoo buying the company. I don't believe it will happen.

The TIVO founder wants to remain independent. Funding was received from Comcast for advertising R&D. The company may pickup additional funding by working a deal with one of the search engines; maybe with both! The CNET article believes an exclusive deal will be done but why couldn't both companies index the shows? The costs do not seem to be prohibitive and the ties to the broad internet could enhance the total advertising revenue to TIVO . TIVO is not a stock%2