Google TV: Another partner says bye-bye

NEW YORK, USA: Remember those television commercials featuring actor Kevin Bacon touting GoogleTV?

Well, the company selling those GoogleTV devices, Logitech, now says the whole thing was an expensive mistake.

During an investor conference this week, Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca delivered an amazingly strong-worded indictment of GoogleTV and of the company’s set-top box that offered the service, known as the Revue.

Logitech basically went to market with a half-cooked “beta” product “and it cost us dearly,” De Luca confessed, according to a report in the technology blog The Verge. Logitech will finish off its inventory of Revue devices this quarter, and has no plans to introduce a replacement, the report quoted De Luca as saying.

For those keeping score, that’s the second major GoogleTV launch partner to drop out. Earlier this year, Intel said it would cease making the chips used to power GoogleTV devices.

Google’s struggles parlaying its tech and Web expertise onto the television screen is hardly unique: even the almighty Apple has had a tough time in the market.

Google meanwhile has just released a new, 2.0 version of the software for GoogleTV. And a new crop of hardware devices from Samsung and Vizio are expected in 2012.

But Google’s biggest wildcard may be its planned $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which happens to be a major manufacturer of TV cable set-top boxes. With Motorola under its thumb, Google will have a partner that can’t quit.