If the rumored partnership between Apple and Google in the TV space materializes, watch for another notch on the Internet’s stick in the Web vs. Old School Media.

The gizmo starring in this upcoming chapter will be Apple’s $299 iTV device [Apple press release], due out 1st quarter 2007. It will cut in sharply against way North Americans watch television.

Partnering with with Google and its massive library of video content, Apple may push the ad-free TV viewing experience into a significant chunk of households, a phenomenon that Tivo helped pioneer several years ago with its line of DVRs.

It will help power the move to a more diverse, ground up, non-intelligence-insulting medium. I couldn’t be happier.

As for the download-times-are-too-long naysayers, I counter that download speeds everywhere are getting faster year after year, not slower. Broadband penetration is now well over half of US household connections. In 2004 the figure was just 29%. And Apple sold 125,000 movies in the first week of the iTunes Music Store’s movie offerings.

The irony in all this is of course that the cable companies’ very own data networks will be turned against them. And I couldn’t be happier about that, too.

read more about it: CNET , Newsweek, The Register