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Google Video Becomes Search-Only, YouTube Holds Content

Posted by Zonk on from the one-falls-while-the-other-rises dept.

Bangor writes "Google is planning to turn Google Video into a search index of all the world's available video online. The change will see YouTube becoming Google's only platform for user-generated video and premium content sales, and Google said that YouTube content would be immediately added to the Google Video search index. The company plans to expand that to eventually include all video online. From the article: 'The company said that they 'envision most user-generated and premium video content being hosted on YouTube,' which clearly suggests that the Google Video storefront will eventually give way to YouTube.'"

6 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google's interface was better. The videos could easily take up nearly full screen, the quality seemed a little bit higher, and it was just overall easier to deal with compared to YouTube.

    1. Re:Too bad by alphamugwump · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What I liked about google video was the fact that the stream was seekable. You could drag the little slider past the end of the buffer, the video would start buffering from that point, and it still play. That doesn't work with youtube.

  2. Re:Makes sense by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Eh. It's not about the space, it's about good old fashioned "normalization"...Don't duplicate effort. They'd have to have staff to maintain Google video, and staff to maintain YouTube, staff to program new features for Google video, and staff to program new features for YouTube.

    The only problem I see is that, historically, YouTube has been much quicker to respond to DMCA-style takedown notices than Google Video, and I'd hate to see that policy continue at YouTube and lose Google video at the same time.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  3. RIP better interface by spyrochaete · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Too bad. Google Video's interface is far better than YouTube's. The dealbreaker that keeps me loyal to Google Video (not that there's anything worth watching on either) is the ability to skip forward in the video to a part that hasn't yet been cached. I sometimes like to skip through a video to see whether it's worth my while to watch and it makes me nuts having to wait for the whole thing to download first.

  4. We'll miss you, google video by heroine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The nice thing about google video was that it worked and it was simple. You could resize the video arbitrarily. Unfortunately simplicity and functionality doesn't make money.

  5. Re:No, Google Video allowed 4X higher resolution by assassinator42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Plus, Google lets you download the original file (DivX/MPEG/whatever). I really hope they don't get rid of this. Google Video was a better video uploading site, it's just that YouTube is more popular and has more content.