Question: I decided to try to my hand at this, and have had a somewhat frustrating day. I've been downloading and installing all the developement software, but Eclipse has given me lots of trouble. I've figured most of it out, but have another problem. For some reason the Google APIs are not installing :

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/79bEa.png)

[bigger image](https://i.stack.imgur.com/79bEa.png)

Why is this? They are important right? I'm currently using a book for total beginners, and I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing as of now. Thank you SO MUCH for any help and your time viewing this.

(I am running Eclipse Indigo)

Answer: 
As you can see in the status bar, they are installing fine. Just the *Google TV* is not compatible with your environment. If you want to go for smartphone app development, then either the "pure" Android APIs or the Google APIs (including Google Maps) are fine for the beginning.
The Google APIs aren't 100% mission critical to developing an Android application, but do contain classes and methods for using most of the Google features (Gmail, Google Maps, etc.).

You should be fine with just the Android APIs until you get into the more advanced functionality of the platform.