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Google Video Not Ready for Prime Time?
elfguy writes "Ars Technica has a piece on the Google Video Store, and their opinion is that it seems a little rushed to market. The interface is very bad, with paid and free videos mixed together. While free videos can be viewed in Flash on any platform, their paid DRM'ed videos require a Windows program, and the page tells you the available formats only after you purchase it." From the article: "As I pointed out in my coverage of the keynote, for all of its evangelization of open standards, Google has done an about-face with the video store. Not only are the videos protected by DRM, but Google has gone and rolled its own home-grown solution instead of using one of the current solutions. On one level, that makes sense: Apple doesn't share its DRM, and Microsoft is Google's biggest competition. However, inflicting yet another flavor of DRM on the public goes against the desire of many in Congress and in the consumer electronics industry to see a single, unified standard emerge."
What part of beta do these people not get?
It's not just the fact that it doesn't look pretty.
1- When you buy the video, you are told "requires Windows XP and an Internet connection". You only find out AFTER buying it which format it comes in.
2- When you buy the video, you buy the right to stream it only. If you try to download the video, it will only download a small file and STILL stream the actual video from Google, so you cannot view it offline.
3- Because of the special DRM, there is no way to put paid Google videos on iPod or other mobile devices.
On one level, that makes sense: Apple doesn't share its DRM, and Microsoft is Google's biggest competition. However, inflicting yet another flavor of DRM on the public goes against the desire of many in Congress and in the consumer electronics industry to see a single, unified standard emerge."
Good! Muddle up the field more. The more confusing this stuff gets for the average consumer, the more they'll become aware of DRM and its potenially adverse repercussions.
If Congress and the electronics lobby were successful, we'd be forced into a crappy DRM scheme with little recourse. More DRM is good for us consumers; we can go elslewhere if the DRM scheme of one provider is horribly crippled.
A unified DRM scheme would no doubt include some form of hardware "Trusted Device" nonsense that would make life needlessly frustrating. Companies have the right to protect their products and services, but we certianly deserve the freedom to walk away and try some other firm's DRM. Hopefully one that is minimally intrusive.
I think Google needs to bundle all of their services together (Maps, Video, Print, etc.) into one packeage where you can go for everything. The new service: Google Master.
Of course, initially it would have to be Google Master Beta...
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
If it allows you to purchase videos that won't work on your system without ever warning you of that prior to purchase, it is indeed bad, not "simple".
Imagine if when you bought a DVD from Amazon they would just pick-to-ship by title, mixing discs of all different region codes together. When you got your new DVD, popped it in your player, and discovered that you had bought a Region 3 DVD that was unplayable on your Region 1 player, would you thank Amazon for "simplifying" the process? Or would you be upset?
My bet is you'd be upset -- especially when Amazon could obviate the problem altogether by simply matching your address (or what local store you buy from) to the appropriate region - which they do.
"Simple" makes doing the right thing easy. "Bad" makes doing the wrong thing easy. Google Video's UI is bad.
Read my blog.
I was reading an NBA related blog where someone was speaking about their experience purchasing NBA game videos from Google Video. Apparently, many of the videos are cut off prior to the end of the game, in the 3rd quarter frequently, with NO 4th quarter coverage. This seems to defeat one of the purposes of offering NBA game videos: so the consumer can watch the game and find out who wins. The purchaser contacted Google Video, who told him "sorry, all sales are final." They definitely have a lot of kinks to iron out, one of them being ripping off consumers buying NBA game videos. See here for the blog post I'm speaking about.