I disagreed on this. Microsoft had been done this with Windows for years, and I don’t see PC makers having problems with Microsoft. They compete between each other, but not with Microsoft, so I guess the same can apply for Google TV.

“Google is certainly going to set up obstacles to stop hardware manufacturers customizing Android too much.”

On this one I think it is a problem, I just hope that Google had learned from Android phone customization/fragmentation experience, to try to have the Google TV platform consolidated. Technically a solution for the manufacturers to distinguish between each others can be as simple as every TV manufacturer create his own customized launcher under the same Android infrastructure/version, but this area need to be planned careful by Google.