A trend of recent years has seen pay TV operators increasingly outsourcing the brains behind their TV operations to hyperscalers, and dressing that up as some sort of innovation. In one of the most paramount examples of this to date, Liberty Global has handed Google Cloud the keys to the castle—in a sweeping deal which will see Google’s Gemini AI models take control of the operator’s Horizon TV platform. Is Balan Nair, the legendary architect behind Horizon TV, weeping in his sleep over such a decision to mutilate his baby? Once CTO, this move might have ruffled feathers, but now as President and CEO of Liberty Latin America (a separate entity to Liberty Global), Horizon has long flown the nest.…