Google isn't making displays at this point, are they? I think this is talking about an actual TV display not a set-top box.

Strictly speaking no, but LG's going to release TVs with integrated Google TV systems in a couple weeks. ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/net-us-google-lg-i... )

(And [like jsight said] Sony released a couple also, although they're apparently focusing on set-top boxes now: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/09/sonys-second-try-at-googl... )

Sony integrated it into a display, and it always seemed pretty clear that Google's intent was to get others to do this as well.

I'm mostly a Google fan, but I will laugh if Apple takes over the smart TV market from Google, when Google had a 2 year head-start. That would be crazy, and pretty humiliating on Google's part I think. At least that's how I'd feel if Apple did that to me.

I think Google failed so far with Google TV because they focused too much on the TV part (and they didn't even do that very well), and they almost completely ignored the software part (games, apps, Siri-alternatives, Google Talk video-chat, etc). A cause for that is also Intel's hardware which made the Google TV set top boxes very expensive, and not even compatible with the Android Market.