The report follows TiVo's launch last week of digital video recorders that combine broadcast and web content. Microsoft and Apple are also looking for their place in the hybrid broadcast-web space. Google's experiment offers the search giant access to 14 million Dish viewers, signaling the potential to yield valuable results.

Consumer Experience and Advertising

As Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, sees it, there are two overlapping angles here: Consumer experience and advertising.

"Obviously online Google satisfies consumer search queries and serves targeted ads against those. This would appear to extend the same model to TV," Sterling said. "But the ad component would also feature a behavioral element -- viewing history -- as part of the targeting."

Television seems like a natural extension of Google ads, especially as set-top boxes combine the ability to search and view content from traditional and Internet broadcasters. Google is intent on pushing its Android operating system beyond mobile devices to set-top boxes, buddy boxes, and TVs, a Journal interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in January suggested.

A New Search Frontier

Google has the lion's share of Internet search and is actively battling for mobile search. Can Google succeed in translating its search dominance to yet another screen? That remains to be seen, especially in an ultracompetitive market for set-top boxes. But Google sees the potential -- and so does Sterling.

"As the Internet and traditional video content increasingly mingle on the TV screen -- there are data that now argue that almost 25 percent of U.S. TV viewers getting Internet content on TV directly or through a set-top box -- there will be a need for a search-like service to help discover and navigate it," Sterling said.

With 168 million U.S. Internet users watching online videos in September, according to comScore, and nearly 26 billion videos viewed during a month, the opportunity is clear. And with the convergence of broadcast and Internet video, the opportunity is drawing plenty of attention.

Sterling pointed to several companies working to index or organize Internet video or attempting to catalog web and traditional programming in a single application or experience. One of those, Clicker, just raised $11 million in Series B funding.

"Google has for some time been trying to do a better job with targeting TV and online video advertising through its partnerships and 'TV ads' program," Sterling said. "Eventually the TV will be just another screen through which consumers get Internet content. And Google also wants to be there when that becomes mainstream."