SageTV was recently acquired by Google, and many expected that it’s the DVR technology that the search giant wants. However, SnapStream Media founder Rakesh Agrawal would beg to differ. “I consider it impossible that Google acquired SageTV so they could add native DVR capabilities to Google TV (remember, Google already manages the program guide, channel changing, and even automating your native DVR). I recently read “In the Plex” by Steven Levy and it gives a glimpse of how Google thinks — and for Google, the future is all about the Internet and the cloud,” Agrewal said in a blogpost. It actually makes sense.

Now if not for the DVR capabilities, what else could Google be after with its acquisition   of SageTV? According to Gigaom, it’s the latter’s place-shifting software. It allows users to watch live and archived TV programming on computers from anywhere with an internet connection. This functionality already exists on iOS devices, and it seems like SageTV will engineer a similar capability on Android.

Bottom line, Google TV Everywhere is in the making. It will allow user to access live TV feeds, control their DVR, and with SageTV’s integration, allows the DVR recordings to be accessible from anywhere via any device.

SageTV’s website reads: “Since 2002, we’ve worked to change the TV viewing experience by building cutting-edge software and technology that allows you to create and control your media center from multiple devices. And as the media landscape continues to evolve, we think it’s time our vision of entertainment management grows as well. By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services.

“We’ve seen how Google’s developer efforts are designed to stimulate innovation across the web, and as developers have played a core role in the success of SageTV, we think our shared vision for open technology will help us advance the online entertainment experience. We look forward to joining Google, and while we don’t have anything specific to announce at this time, we encourage interested developers to email.”

In other online video happenings, YouTube, another Google company dominating the online scene today, accounts for 40 percent of all online video visits. 4 out of 10 online video viewing sessions is on YouTube. “Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in May with 147.2 million unique users views,” according to a Comscore report.

Meanwhile, Netflix, one of the today’s top video rental service (with multiple accounts of outages in the past), suffered another fainting fit last night, which lasted for a couple of hours. The incident left a couple of million subscribers unable to access their movie queues and streams. The company said that their engineers are working on the problem but are unable to identify what exactly it is just yet. Many speculated that it was caused by hackers responsible for the string of high-profile attacks recently. Thankfully however, it wasn’t. “Good morning,” wrote Steve Swasey, Netflix’s spokesman. “It was a technical issue that we fixed.”

In addition, Apple, which has always prided itself for its simplicity and user experience, is forcing some iPhone and iPad app makers, prominently Hulu, to comply with a new Apple in-app commerce rule to remove links to their website where users can sign up for subscription to their services such as Hulu Plus. This will happen to Netflix and Amazon as well, reminding us just how much power Apple has over its platform, subsequently influencing millions at the consumer level.

When it’s all said and done, it’s clear that the trends are shifting to digital TV options, breaking away from traditional TV.  But while traditional TV is still sovereign when it comes to video experience, there were more than 15 billion videos streamed online – which is by far the highest to date. Online video is catching up.