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Google Readies Platform for Video Distribution
Eric writes "According to BetaNews, 'Google is preparing a video distribution platform that provides a complete ecosystem of services for content producers, publishers and end-users.' The first phase of its video upload program rolled out today, and 'content owners will be able to control distribution rights themselves, even setting a price for their video clips. Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google.'"
please be sure you own the rights to the works you upload
I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle for this service to overcome. I think this would be a great service for smaller production teams or individuals looking to release their creations (although there are a number of services that already do this I believe). But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.
pending our approval process
so, is it someones job to look through every video when it's uploaded? To catch any copyright infringement. Again, this seems like a real problem for this and any other similar service.
-Teiresias
I always love it when words like "Ecosystem" are used to describe business models. It gives me a chuckle, and I know not to waste my time reading the FA.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Although I love the idea, particularly the part about pay videos if you want, the manual verifying of video uploads by some Google lackey isn't seriously cumbersome. I submitted a video yesterday (late afternoon) and it's still not verified 12 hours later. Unless this drastically changes, I can't see this being used to quickly put up new content for your site or anything where time sensitive material is a factor.
So what does this point to for Google? There might certainly be a market for Indie film distribution via Google. This would dramatically reduce distribution costs and open a whole new market for indie films.
Google is the Search King. Don't you think they'll be able to create an automated system for straining out bad submissions (porn or copyright violations)? I mean, even if the the title or description of a video submission itself aren't incriminating enough, the probably have plenty of other methods for getting context about a video. The probability that a violating video already exists on the net is large, so they could make a system to identify a video by general characteristics (obviously a digest-hash would not be appropriate across formats, but I'm sure there are other ways of doing it).
This might explain their recent fiber-optic buying spree.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
However, Comcast, or whoever you get your cable from gets the pricethey get for a channel by guaranteeing a certain number of subscribers. If you could pick each channel individually, they couldn't make that guarantee as large of number, and economies of scale would break down. It's possible that subscribing to the 10 channels you do watch would cost more than subscribing to a 50 channel package with 40 you don't.
Free MacMini
Sorry - check out this image. It doesn't look like Google is interested in the porn industry...yet.
I have to say it sounds like an extremely interesting twist on the distribution of video content. For me to be able to upload content and distribute it for free is quite amazing. This means they will not only be gaining access to the subscribers or paying customers but also the families etc who are going to use it to share their videos. It benefits everyone. Google gets more impressions to sell advertising on and content producers get an easy and efficient market place/distribution system. Add the advanced searching that is sure to follow and this will be an extremely powerful resource. Of course when they start to put in some pre-roll or instream advertising for the unpaid content their revenues and profit margins will be even higher than they are now.
Go Google Go!
How does Google know it's "video"? Can't I just pipe my own CDs into the audio tracks of a blank MPG2/4 file? Then I can listen to my own music anywhere, over those famously fat Google pipes. This is fair use of content that I legitimately own, even according to the entertainment industry before the Supreme Court. By extension, can't I rename any file "..mp4", and use Google to distribute it? They're not going to watch all these movies, are they?
--
make install -not war
major news will be able to preview and bid for footage. it's about time.
i.e. One or more folks are in charge of Kids' birthday videos, one or more in charge of original animation, and 10,313 are in charge of the various porn categories.
They are "trained," "paid" based on performance, and are moderated (e.g. if copyrighted works slip through on their watch, they are somehow penalized).
The verification bottleneck opens up significantly without Google's staff of Full Time Employees expanding exponentially.
The Google Network ...
Even if you can afford something it has an opportunity cost, and that may be too great.
A new app Windows can use is going to bring in much more users than expanding an app to Linux or the Mac.
So sure, maybe you spend (to pull figures out of the air) 500,000 getting the desktop apps onto Linux and the Mac, and that nets you 1 million return in greater users and so ad revenue. Or maybe you could spend that 500,000 on a new project that gets 4 million return in revenue.
I agree, but their desktop strategy is markedly different from their web application strategy, and it's not clear (to me at least) why Google wants Mac and Linux users (to wit: spending time and resources making sure GMail works in Mozilla, Firefox and Safari) on the web, but isn't interested in those very same users when it comes to desktop applications.
As an example: How much could it cost to port their video uploader to the Mac? Maybe $50,000 to one consultant...seems like a drop in the bucket to get video from 28 million Macintosh users (who, given iMovie is free, are arguably more likely to have video content in the first place).
Just because they used plain language in their terms does not mean that they are being !evil. I think enticing people to give up the rights to their content is edging twards evil.
I think they could be more clear about what is going on here.
You're so funny.
You see, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have billions...why? Because they had these philosophies that they supposedly adhered to. So I may not have given them $'s directly, but I've given them 2 things far more valuable...my trust, and my time. And from those, they got their $billions.
"It's best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat."
No comment on the fact that they couldn't keep themselves from doing everything but the three things they list?
True in the short term new ideas cause buzz, which causes the price to rise, but all it takes is one quarter of earnings to be below expectations because they had unexpected costs from buying 30 different random companies to send the price plunging
This is screwy. I can send video by Google mail
without anything more than a web browser. Why would
I need anything more for this new service?
Did you ever stop to think that "hosting, caching, routing, trasmitting, storing, copying, distributing, performing, displaying, reformating, excerpting, and analyzing" are the kinds of rights they need to, say, HOST YOUR DAMN VIDEO ON THE WEB IN THE FIRST PLACE?!