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Coming soon: Google TV?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wouldn't-that-be-special dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, reports ZDNet. Google's effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three, the report states. It quotes sources familiar with the plan saying the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows."

4 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. This is great! by delta_avi_delta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If I'm not mistaken, vast quantities of tv archive, much of it from the "golden age" when people expected their educational programs to be presided over by professors, is in the public domain. I'd love to be able to dig up some early BBC2.

  2. Coupled with a pay per view model... by jarich · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If Google can setup the search with a pay per view service on TV shows, this could put a dent in the P2P scene.

    Imagine being able to look up an old Seinfeld, and then watch it for fifty cents. Or the latest Smallville, or ...

    If anyone can pull this off, it's Google.

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    Agile Artisans
  3. Great idea! by koi88 · · Score: 3, Interesting


    I'm really looking forward to this.
    I'm using Google's image-search very often (and love it!) and I could really use video clip-search.
    However, considering how well many sites hide the actual video clips (and I'm not talking about porn), I guess Google might face strong resistance from content providers (wasn't there last week a story about a porn website sueing Google over image-search?)

    --

    I don't need a signature.
  4. TV 0, Radio 1 by mogrify · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google's trying to bring TV to the Web the same way they're bringing books to the Web

    This is a weird way to describe what Google does... if they bring anything to the Web, it's the Web itself!

    But here's the best part of the entire article, IMHO:

    Google has been working with National Public Radio and others to index transcripts of audio already on the Internet so that clips can be searchable from its news search engine.

    Personally, I would use the video search engine only occasionally... but there is an unbelievable amount of high-quality content that NPR provides on its website, going back years -- interviews, shows, projects, special reports, hell, even Car Talk. The radio thing is a real gem, and I can't wait to use it.

    --
    perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'