Having staked out a position on your PC and many mobile devices, Google now has its sights on your living room. Late last week, the search giant announced the release of a free beta version of Google Media Server, a Windows application that seeks to bridge the gap amidst a PC and a TV.

That gap is amoung the explosion of TV programs, movies, music and homemade videos on the Web and television sets. A variety of solutions have been launched by Microsoft, Apple and others, and now Google is entering that ring.

Gadgets and UPnP

Its Media Server uses Google Desktop gadgets as the administration tool and desktop search to find media files. The user will additionally need a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) device like Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart high-definition televisions, and other consumer devices.

From the consumers’ point of view, any device that is DLNA-certified as meeting the standards of

the Digital Living Network Alliance should work. The standards supply a set of protocols that allow consumer devices to share details on a home network.

Once those components are in place, Google said, a user can access and play on a TV the videos, music or photos stored on a connected PC.

Google owns YouTube, the largest source of videos on the Web, so more traffic to YouTube means more advertising revenue for Google. But there are additionally other aspects to the Google empire that could fit into that constellation.

For instance, Google has been spearheading Android, an open-source platform for mobile devices, and it led a lobbying effort that resulted in some of the frequencies recently auctioned by the Federal Communications Commission becoming open to third-party devices.

The aftereffect is that Google has the potential to connect video composition, mobile devices, and PCs to television sets, creating…

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