Google TV is the latest and most prominent service to connect TVs to the Web, promising to make all the living room’s audio and video as searchable and instantly accessible as the Internet’s content. That promise requires significant cooperation from media companies, and many have been reluctant to help.

With Google TV, the company wants to be a leader in the budding industry of Internet-connected television sets, which Forrester expects to be in 43 million United States homes by 2015, up from two million this year.

The average American watches five hours of TV a day, making it the biggest medium for advertisers. “One of our goals with Google TV is to finally open up the living room and enable new innovation from content creators, programmers, developers and advertisers,” Ambarish Kenghe, developer product manager for Google TV, wrote in the company blog post on Monday. Google faces competition from makers of set-top boxes including Apple, TiVo, Boxee and Roku, and from television distributors.

In addition to media companies’ caution, they all face another overarching challenge: TV viewers unimpressed with Internet-connected televisions. Just 3 percent of people own or intend to buy one, and almost two-thirds have not heard of them, according to Forrester. Of those who own them, a quarter do not use the Web capabilities. Still, major players in the technology and media sectors are largely in agreement that Internet-connected sets are poised to take off.