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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.'"

12 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Official Announcement by warmgun · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a link to the official announcement from Google's blog.

  2. 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 painQuin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But maybe, just maybe, Google will take that into consideration, and use the Google Video backend to power the YouTube website? YouTube is basically a name and color scheme, as far as most people are concerned.

      --
      A guilty conscience means at least you've got one.
    2. Re:Too bad by dedazo · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The quality on YouTube varies wildly because of the sheer number of videos on there. Some are pretty good and some are really bad. Google Video on the other hand has far less content (and far less interesting content, AFAIC) and maybe on average the people who upload to it tend to have higher-quality original material.

      I rarely care about the quality on YouTube. After all, if I'm looking at an 80s commercial I haven't seen in 20+ years I don't expect HD quality. The obscure cool stuff is why I find YouTube compelling, not the "lonelygirl15"-like crap. YouTube is to video what Napster was to music in the early 00s. It's the most amazing collection of obscure crap you thought you had forgotten or really never thought you'd find. I really like it.

      --
      Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    3. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. Predictions by Duncan3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    1. This will save everyone from having to upload their boobie and accident videos twice - go look at the top 100 some time, that's all it is.

    2. People that create the content (videos) still won't get paid, much like Google News, etc.

    3. Google will replace their search in a year to one big button "I'm feeling lucky"... which will show a boobie video.

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
  5. 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.

  6. RTFA! Google Video Will Still Host Content! by pctainto · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google Video is not going away! All they're doing is adding YouTube results to the search results when you search Google Video. Their plan is to at some point incorporate other video websites so that Google Video is not just a place to view videos, but also the one place to search for videos.

    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/look-ahead- at-google-video-and-youtube.html

    --
    I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
  7. You're confusing things by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're mixing up several issues here.

    Firstly, posting a video on YouTube does not require any flash development at all. So the availability of FOSS flash development tools for POSTING is a non-starter.

    Secondly, YouTube supports a plethora of codecs, some of which are already FOSS. For example, I know they support XVid for a fact. Now, I know this is an MPEG4 based codec and is therefore patent-encumbered in some parts of the world, but IMO this has nothing to do with if it is FOSS or not. YouTube may already support FOSS codecs like Theora, Dirac and Tarkin, I don't know I have never tried. But frankly, it would not surprise me if they did, especially since they already support obscure formats like "Sega Video".

    The only FOSS-related issue, as far as YouTube goes, is the fact that you (supposedly) need a binary flash PLAYER to VIEW the content. I say "supposedly" because in actual fact, anyone can download the .flv file and use FOSS tools to transcode it to any format you want, including simply changing the container losslessly. Since these tools are already available, it would not be out of reach to envision a simple FOSS Firefox plugin that did this on the fly for YouTube and other similar sites.

  8. No, Google Video allowed 4X higher resolution by ebonkyre · · Score: 5, Informative

    GV allowed 640x480 with no size/length restrictions and no fee.
    YT maxes out at 320x240, with a 100MB/10min limit on free accounts.

    --
    "Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
    1. 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.