Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Google Video

Jan 2006: More about Google Video Marketplace

Are you still in shock from the last good idea to come out of the Google Labs? If so, you probably aren't ready for the next one...

Google Video, which went live yesterday, allows you to search through the closed captioning text of all the programs in their archive.

However, despite the name, the service doesn't return videos, at least not yet. Instead it returns still snapshot images at the time stamp where the closed captions indicate the show was covering your search term, along with a text snippet from the captions with your search term highlighted.


So does it make me a geek if one of the first things I plugged into the new engine was a query about the Apple iPod?

The actual usefulness of this service is obvious limited by the archive material available, and at this point that's fairly limited. It'll be interesting to watch this one evolve, does this mark the start of Google's bid to be capture the video on demand market? The current version of Google Video has fairly limited functionality, but I think that it's potential is obvious to everyone watching, no pun intended. If they can do this, with a bit more time and effort, what else can they make it do?

Update: Apparently Google Video came about due to a cheese factory in Wisconsin. Who'd have thought it?

Update: Interestingly, although probably unrelated, it seems that Google is looking for dark fibre. Perhaps my off the cuff comments about video on demand aren't so far fetched after all.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, blinkx has much larger range of content, and does actually link to actual videos. But lets face it, the Google interface is a lot better. While it's easy to search for things on blinkx I find it fairly hard to figure out which are the most relevant of the returned links.

    I'm guessing that Google is following Eric Raymond's "release early, release often..." philosophy, which he talked about in The Cathedral & the Bazaar. If so, we should see their offering improving quickly.

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