Om Malik asks, "Is Microsoft IPTV’s Weak Link?" While Microsoft is trying to lock up the TV market by dominating the hardware in the home (MCE and Xbox), it seems that the big constraint is the middle layer between the content creator and the consumer. Microsoft can't field enough servers to handle even a pilot project, so their the rollout in Switzerland is being delayed:

The problems stem from the fact that at present the servers cannot support more than 500 households and even then it can only offer only one television channel.

This infrastructure is where Google excels. I've speculated numerous times that Google is readying a push into TV, which has an advertising market 20 times bigger than Web advertising.

And Google wouldn't just provide ads. Larry Page said, "What we've done for the Web, Google will do for television." That's a revolutionary change in the media and entertainment business from controlling content in a one-way medium to enabling many-to-many conversations.

Google is investing big time in that middle layer of infrastructure. When you're serving petabytes of data to thin clients like TVs and mobile devices, you've got to cache that data close to the user. Cringely says only Google can do this, and they've got a huge head start. The Google Web Accelerator is a Big Deal because it's one more component of the Google Grid that is making this middle layer a reality.

This news from Switzerland shows that the server infrastucture is a big challenge even for Microsoft, and even for a small rollout. To do this at scale is Google's competitive advantage when they enter the TV space.

Now what about that in-home device? TiVo? Akimbo? Mini? Does Google even need a device if it solves the content-serving puzzle?