SAN FRANCISCO - Technology used to be so simple.

In the old days, you listened to music on your iPod while exercising. During an idle moment at the office you might use Google on your Microsoft Windows PC for Internet searches. Maybe you would post an update on Facebook. After dinner, you could watch a DVD from Netflix or open a new book that had arrived that day from Amazon.

That vision, where every company and every device had its separate role, is so 2011.

The biggest tech companies want to erase the boundaries and own every waking moment of your day. The new strategy is to build a device, sell it to consumers and then sell them the content to play on it. And maybe some ads, too.

The recent news that Google is preparing its first Google-branded home entertainment device - a system for streaming music in the house - might seem far afield for an Internet search and advertising company, but fits solidly into an industrywide goal in which each tech company would like to be all things to all people.

"It's not about brands or devices or platforms anymore," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, an information technology research firm. "It's about the ecosystem. The idea is to get consumers tied into that ecosystem as tightly as possible so they and their content are locked into one system."

So Facebook, which has half of its users accessing it from mobile devices, has dabbled in phones and is said to be moving even more firmly in that direction. Apple, once solely a desktop computer maker, already gets most of its profit from mobile devices and is eyeing televisions, which would play content from iTunes.

Amazon created the Kindle Fire tablet, and there is intense speculation it is developing a Kindle Phone - a prospect that became more credible several weeks ago when Microsoft's senior director of Windows Phone development, Brandon Watson, joined the retailer. He said the opportunity, which he did not specify, was "too big to pass up."

Microsoft, which has tightened its relationship with Nokia to again be a player in phone software, has placed its Xbox in millions of living rooms as a home entertainment portal.

Reports of the new Google device come just as the search giant's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility is expected to close, giving Google direct control over one of the companies that uses its Android phone operating system - and presumably more of an ability to extend its reach.

None of these companies will reveal their future plans. But their hiring trends give a clue. Their job boards are brimming with positions for people with degrees in electrical engineering and hardware design.

Before the advent of coordinated systems, executives at consumer technology companies talked about connected homes and convergence. But no one had the hardware and content that would fit together seamlessly.

The pioneer was Steven P. Jobs, the late Apple chief executive who made creating devices look easy. Dream them up, make the software complement the hardware, outsource the production, and watch your company become the most valuable on earth.

Successful as Apple and Amazon have been with their devices, there are periodic signs of disquiet. Early users of the Kindle Fire reported trouble getting their own content on the device. (Downloading Amazon content? No problem.) Apple just made it easier for people to create content with its iBook Authors book creation tool, provided the author does not want to sell it through anyone but Apple. That sparked some negative reaction.

Where the entertainment player will fit into the Google landscape is unclear. It could shore up Google Music, a free cloud service that lets people buy tracks from the Android Market and listen to songs from their various Internet-connected devices.

When Google introduced Google Music last November, the company marketed the service as a way for its users to share and discover new music with its social media feature Google Plus. But it has failed to sign up Warner, one of the top four music labels, and users have criticized the sharing feature as confusing.

"Who knows how the model is going to play out?" said Andrew Murphy, an analyst at the investment firm Piper Jaffray. "Google doesn't know yet. But if you aren't building it today, then you aren't winning in five years."

Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Jenna Wortham from New York.

The New York Times

(China Daily 02/19/2012 page9)