Google Mail. Google Phone. Google Voice. Google News.

Holy cow. Is there any corner of our lives where Google doesn’t want a toehold?

Not anymore. It’s here, just in time for the holidays: Google TV!

Now, let’s be clear: you can’t swing by your local Couch-Potato Depot and ask for “a Google TV.” (Well, you can, but they’ll look at you funny.) Instead, Google TV is an operating system, based on the same Android software that’s inside many app phones. Google hopes that other companies will build it into their TV sets, Blu-ray disc players and set-top boxes. The point of all this is to bring Web videos to your TV set.

Now, the idea of bringing the Web to your TV is not a new idea. It’s been kicking around since the Internet was still in pull-ups.

But no matter how many times the industry tries to cram Web+TV down our throats, the masses just don’t swallow. That’s probably because when we sit down at the TV, we want to be passive, with brains turned off, and when we surf the Web, we’re in a different mind-set: more active, more directed.