By Scott Nyman

Google announced their interactive television platform earlier this year, promising to bridge the gap between content sourced from traditional broadcast and up-and-coming internet streaming services.  Running an adapted version of Google’s Android operating system (which has proven itself to be a magnet to intellectual property litigation, but that is a whole matter altogether…), the Google TV platform has already been integrated into select televisions and set top boxes. Google’s contender promises big things for the living room.

Recently, Google has been struggling to deliver the grand experience that it had been promising. Television networks have began blocking access to their online content through the Big G’s boxes, likely fearing a drop in the large revenues generated through broadcast advertising. So far, Google TV’s list of haters includes FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS and now Viacom. The Viacom family includes networks such as Comedy Central, CMT, BET, Spike, Nickelodeon, VH1 and the MTVs (all 200 of them).

The last entry in that list is particularly interesting, seeing how Viacom just recently lost their $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google. In that case, Viacom claimed that Google’s slight of hand allowed the large scale infringement of Viacom’s copyrights through user postings on Google’s popular video sharing site, YouTube. In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stranton ruled against Viacom by stating, “mere knowledge of the prevalence of (copyright violations) in general is not enough” to make YouTube and Google liable.

Viacom plans to appeal the ruling as soon a possible. In the mean time, Viacom doesn’t seem hesitant to do everything in their power to make Google’s life difficult, even if they can only do it one MTV at a time.