Google Videos Going Offline; Time To Grab What You Want

An anonymous reader writes "I received this email this morning: 'Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we're removing the remaining hosted content... On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback.' They've added a download button for saving your content but it expires after May 13, 2011 and they encourage users to move the content to YouTube." Not all is lost, though. Writes reader none295: "If you want to help archive Google Video, get some Linux machines running and join us in IRC (EFNet #archiveteam / #googlegrape)."

Comments

The cloud.

[GWRedDragon]

Yet another example for people who say that the cloud is a good place to permanently store their data....

Re:The cloud.

[MahJongKong]

You can't expect a free service to stay online forever.

Re:The cloud.

[Osgeld]

you cant expect a paid service to stay online forever.

if you care about it you have your own copy

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it was hosted by Google, yes, you can.

Re:The cloud.

[Seumas]

You and Grandpa Dvorak.

Re:The cloud.

[FrootLoops]

Google is giving people time to save their content. There's a difference between data in the cloud suddenly and permanently becoming inaccessible and this.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose you're on a month-long vacation from the cloud and this happens, like you're in a coma or something. Sure, it's far-fetched, but it could happen. If it's something really important to you, you don't want to take that chance. Of course, whether a super-compressed low-quality transfer of Pirates of Silicon Valley is really that important is another matter.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You did have a year since they stopped allowing uploads, you know. Personally, if it were me, I would have downloaded all my stuff then preemptively, but teho.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, it's an example why the Internet in general is not a good place to expect history and culture to be retained.

Re:The cloud.

[Foxhoundz]

Who said it was a permanent place to store the data? There's no storage medium that will guarantee permanent storage of data. Everything ends or crumbles at some point. At least in the cloud, you get ample notification of impending shutdown before it happens.

Re:The cloud.

[Chris Mattern]

Which doesn't change the fact that people have the chance to retrieve their data only because Google was accommodating. A scenario where nobody gets time to get their stuff out is not only plausible, but, in my opinion, inevitable in the long run.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should they also make concessions for time travelers who can't get back to the right time accurately? How about people frozen in cryo stasis for a thousand years? Maybe they should also account for half-bear-half-human hyrbids who uploaded videos a year or so ago but have a genetic urge to hibernate for a few months?

Seriously, where do you draw the line? What they're doing accommodates nearly all of their users. Let's say there's someone who just doesn't want to re-download their stuff and doesn't let Google know this. How do they tell them apart from everyone in your scenario? Are they just supposed to devote time and resources to maintaining pristine copies of every movie uploaded to them indefinitely just in case someone happens to come by to claim one video from twenty years ago? I can assure you, the vast, nearly 100% majority of the videos that WON'T be re-downloaded will be videos that fit the category of "user just didn't care anymore".

You're suggesting they keep the entire archive around, quickly searchable, devoting employee time to keep track of it and make sure nothing goes wrong, for the extremely rare time that someone's going to want one video out of it, until the end of time itself. Which is absurd. In fact, the situations you're describing are EXACTLY the sort of far-fetched things that would make it far more effort than it's worth to keep them around. If it's something REALLY important to you, you would've made backups already.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're suggesting they keep the entire archive around, quickly searchable, devoting employee time to keep track of it and make sure nothing goes wrong, for the extremely rare time that someone's going to want one video out of it, until the end of time itself.

Not at all. I'm suggesting that people keep a local copy of their important files. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:The cloud.

[Threni]

it's swings and roundabouts, though. If you only have your own copy and it's not online somewhere, then you're at risk of theft, fire, flood, magnets, children pouring water on your pc etc etc. A professionally backed up cloud is way safer.

It's safer to say "If you care about it you have your own copy AND a copy on the cloud".

Re:The cloud.

[DarkJC]

Here's what I don't understand: why can't they just move the Google Video content over to youtube themselves? They own both services. Why make everyone who wants to keep their video download it locally and reupload it back to Google's servers?

Re:The cloud.

[mr100percent]

Are there really that many people who delete their local file once it goes on YouTube?

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be surprised.

Re:The cloud.

[DarwinSurvivor]

With new phones (and even regular cameras) having "send to Facebook/Youtube/etc" buttons, a lot of people just empty their memory cards when they get full and never have a local copy to begin with.

Re:The cloud.

[The End Of Days]

You can expect anything you want, really. It's one of things that's great about being human.

Re:The cloud.

[TheLink]

Because the MPAA and RIAA will try to get lots of $$$ from them?

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can expect anything you want, really. It's one of things that's great about being human.

And you can get anything you want... at Alice's Restaurant.

(Everywhere else, though, you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.)

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why use the cloud in the first place? Considering subscription costs and the loss of security, its better to just buy the hardware and store your data yourself. You're just making things harder for yourself by using the cloud in the first place.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is completely unrelated to GP's argument, and hence not a counter-argument.
His argument still stands: It's idiotic to store something "in the network" (I refuse to use retard buzzwords.), because you got zero guarantee that it won't just vanish.

Re:The cloud.

[grumbel]

Even if somebody is keeping a local copy, they might not bother to reupload it to another service and fix all the now obsolete links to the old content, which is why always a large part of the content will be lost in a take down of a service. Sad to see such a move from Google, who not only are not bankrupt, but also have another video service right next door to which they could move the content.

Re:The cloud.

[Sulphur]

You and Grandpa Dvorak.

Speaking of whom, has he ever learned to pronounce silicon?

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that in a way that implies that there is a good _single_ place to permanently store data? Would you mind sharing what that is?

Re:The cloud.

[FrootLoops]

Sure, something like that will probably happen at least once (if it hasn't already), somewhere--it's a big world. The GP was implying that this situation was a reason not to trust the cloud to permanently store data, which I think is a little harsh considering no data has been lost. That is, I agree with their overall point--cloud data could be lost, and if you really care about data don't just trust the cloud--but disagree that this case exemplifies it.

Re:The cloud.

[StormReaver]

Yet another example for people who say that the cloud is a good place to permanently store their data....

Yes, but people will never learn. They'll always say something stupid like, "Well, you shouldn't have been using that service. Something like that could never happen to the service I use."

Re:The cloud.

[WidgetGuy]

Hey, you! Get offa my cloud! ;-)

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if google buys and sacks the lot of em.

Re:The cloud.

[Restil]

Google could also erase your videos the same day that your house burns down, thereby destroying all copies. It's far fetched, but it could happen. A tertiary backup could also get destroyed at the same time and making more backups than that on a regular basis would get to be a hassle, especially if you are constantly verifying that they work. However,we have to get past the point of acceptance that on rare but possible occasions, every once in a while, a few people are just going to have their ass handed to them, whether they deserve it or not, and move on. As for the guy on the one month vacation, and everybody else for that matter, one would assume that since they were able to upload the video in the first place, they're already in possession of a copy, likely the original copy, and likely of higher quality than what currently exists on google video or youtube. If they chose, instead, to erase their high quality original and instead bank on the eternal existence of the low quality copy from a free service that makes no such guarantee, then I'm finding it difficult to display much pity.

-Restil

Re:The cloud.

[johnsnails]

you insensitive cloud!

Re:The cloud.

[GeorgeS]

Yet another reason not to use Google for anything other than what it is...A search engine.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, having a low UID does not prevent you from saying stupid things.

God forbid you would ever use them as, oh, I don't know, an advertising company?

Good one there, GeorgeS.

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really. Why not? How is it not legal to simply say "Youtube has acquired Google video for $1 and all assets are included"?

Re:The cloud.

[Concerned Onlooker]

"And you can get anything you want... at Alice's Restaurant."

Excepting Alice.

Re:The cloud.

[CrystalBill]

Why not indeed! Too much bother and expense I guess.

Re:The cloud.

[greensnake]

It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money. - Jack Handey

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean kinda like yet another reason not to use Windows for anything other than what it is... something to look right through to see what's in the outside world?

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what I don't understand: why can't they just move the Google Video content over to youtube themselves? They own both services. Why make everyone who wants to keep their video download it locally and reupload it back to Google's servers?

I think there are a couple reasons.

1. This gives them a chance to abandon a LOT of data that nobody cares about any more. These services get a lot of crap uploaded which ends up being completely forgotten about, and if it's not viewable by the public isn't doing anything for anybody. That still equates to cost in terms of storage space and processing times for backups, etc.

2. They probably don't want to just create a shitload of new youtube accounts. They're hoping people either setup a new account (and with updated user credentials as well) or merge it with their existing youtube accounts.

3. There are issues with ensuring data which was not publicly accessible remains that way after the transition.

A little more advance notice would have been nice, and I think an option that would auto-transfer to a youtube account would make it a lot easier (i.e. just clikc the button for a back-end transfer instead of having to download and re-up the content).

Re:The cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they don't want to keep videos that nobody cares. If the video owner really wants it on youtube, he can. However, if the video owner feels it's not worth their time, they won't and youtube can stop a bit of crap getting in.

Re:The cloud.

[bn-7bc]

WRONG, Googles first (and probably still most widely used) product was a search engine, others have, and will be added. As any smart company they dont't but all their eggs in one basket,

Re:The cloud.

[inglorion_on_the_net]

it's swings and roundabouts, though. If you only have your own copy and it's not online somewhere, then you're at risk of theft, fire, flood, magnets, children pouring water on your pc etc etc. A professionally backed up cloud is way safer.

It's safer to say "If you care about it you have your own copy AND a copy on the cloud".

True. Or have your own copies in multiple locations. It doesn't have to be some buzzword-compliant cloud service.

And if it is information that you don't want to disclose, take appropriate measures. For example, store the copies in encrypted form, and keep multiple, password-protected copies of the key.

Also, make sure to regularly verify that your backups can be restored, and that this gives you everything you would need after a restore.

Of course, all of this is covered in The Tao Of Backup

Re:The cloud.

[Skidborg]

I've heard stone tablets are pretty good in that respect.

Re:The cloud.

[Xest]

I wondered the same, but Google Video has always been much less restricted than YouTube in terms of content.

Unless it's changed one example that comes to mind is that YouTube never used to allow the raw unedited footage of the Sknyliv airshow disaster, yet Google video did.

So even if they moved it across I suspect there is some content that would be lost forever, which is bad news for anyone wanting to see what the real aftermath of a fighter jet crashing into a crowd is. You know, just in case you ever needed to. On a serious note though I suspect there are many many more things that would be lost once YouTube vastly stricter restrictions come into play.

Or in other words, YouTube is basically just a kids playground, Google videos was actually a relatively unfiltered video archive.

Oh no!

[pasv]

Now I'll have to watch Interstella 5555 now in 5+ parts with advertisements rather than in 1 medium quality Google Video stream :-(

Re:Oh no!

[Samantha Wright]

Fear not! We can all switch to MegaVideo. At least, you can.

Re:Oh no!

[isopropanol]

Youtube has a high-quality version.

I also got the content removal email, but my content was a promo video for an event that is long past, so it's OK by me.

Re:Oh no!

[simp]

"This video contains content from EMI, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

Thanks for the notice EMI. Next time I want to buy audio/video content I will make sure to block you too. Just returning the favor...

Re:Oh no!

[Seth024]

Yes you might not care about a single promo video anymore but think of all the information that will disappear from the internet, never to be seen again, if nobody uploads it anywhere else. If you no longer have the originals, you'll never be able to watch that video again.

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. MV in particular cuts you off at 72 minutes with a nag screen.

People *don't* stick around for a 60 minute register-now penalty until the servers reallow your IP, when you're watching any long movie, or a TV series. You look elsewhere and either give up or torrent it for full-viewing on tomorrow night's media round.

The sad reality is that free file upload sites like rapidshare enforce similar blocks. There is no guarantee that youtube and others have all 5 parts either --very annoying when the copyright guys remove part 3 and 5 just to make you waste your viewing experience incomplete.

Re:Oh no!

[kevinmenzel]

Damn it, you might have to pay for your copy. Shit, that's terrible :)

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it, you might have to pay

and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay

for your copy. Shit, that's terrible :)

Re:Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Must buy new glasses. I read that as 'a porno video'

Re:Oh no!

[isopropanol]

Good thing they provide a download link.

Why?

[Osgeld]

Why didnt they just dump it all on youtube in the first place?

Re:Why?

[mrchaotica]

Maybe the user agreement for uploading to Google Video wasn't flexible enough to allow Google to copy the videos to Youtube?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be too good of an idea. Still, downloading is nice.

Re:Why?

[Belial6]

Then they could give you a button that says "Migrate to YouTube" and be done with it.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they included that bit where they can change fucking everything and take ownership of your house, family and mortal soul without notifying you that's in every EULA ever.

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

Yes... What's more surprising than the closure is that it wasn't on YouTube.

For some reason, I always thought that Google, years ago, decided to make Google Video simply mirror the contents of YouTube and vice versa.

Re:Why?

[tepples]

Not every YouTube has earned the "upload longer videos" privilege, which would be required for migrating any video longer than 15 minutes.

Re:Why?

[mark-t]

Almost every video that I've ever watched on google video was at least half an hour in length, often much longer. Youtube videos can't typically be that long without special arrangements being made. I can't say authoritatively that is the reason why they weren't using youtube, but unless I learn otherwise, I'd be inclined to think that it could have played a factor.

Re:Why?

[dvh.tosomja]

> Why didnt they just dump it all on youtube in the first place?

Because youtube don't have "Download this video" button.

Re:Why?

[hldn]

they could easily add an exception for videos migrated from google video.

Re:Why?

[JeanInMontana]

Because your Mom doesn't work there? Clean up your own mess. Why is it people think the other guy should always do what ever? It is a free service as is, they don't owe anyone squat.

Re:Why?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Then they could give you a button that says "Migrate to YouTube" and be done with it.

This is obviously just a guess - but I wouldn't be surprised if, from a legal standpoint, that could open them up for lawsuits when an end-user moves copyrighted material from Google Video to YouTube.

Re:Why?

[Belial6]

I'm not buying that. They are already on the hook for as much as they are going to be for copyrighted material. If a disclaimer that the users is responsible is good enough, then it is good enough. A better guess would be that they don't think there is very much on there that anyone really cares about, so they don't see a need to migrate it. The way they are doing it, they can do their due diligence in regard to not being evil by letting you get access to the videos if you care, and they can dump anything else.

Re:Why?

[Osgeld]

you mad bro? I currently have 1 video on youtube and zero on google.

anyway its just a little blunt, and could be handled by a "yea move my stuff from one service to another" page along with downloads and "eh screw it"

Re:Why?

[shentino]

Most likely because username/password databases for both of them can't easily be merged and because google won't have a clue how to determine who is who on which site.

Re:Why?

[RivenAleem]

Probably because my Google Video account is different to my YouTube account. What if I don't even have a YouTube account. Under who's name do they say the video is stored? Who is the "uploader".

This also provides a good opportunity to clear out all the videos that are obsolete and of which nobody cares about enough to migrate them themselves

Download Button

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who doesn't see a download button to download my video?

Re:Download Button

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the button is for chrome users only =/

Re:Download Button

[Anonymous Coward]

Your video sucks, that's why.

Re:Download Button

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who doesn't see a download button to download my video?

I don't have a download button either. I've tried Chrome, Firefox, and IE.

Re:Download Button

[Anonymous Coward]

I just figured it out, click on Edit Video Info and then without changing anything click on save. Like magic the download link appears.

If no download link...

[DNS-and-BIND]

For those annoying web videos that you can't download, use to convert that embedded video into .avi, .mp4, .mkv, or any other of a wide choice of formats. The site goes out, downloads the video for you, converts it to your favorite format, and lets you download the completed file. It's freakin' great. Make sure you click on some of their ads if you use the service. I'm not associated with them, I just find their website fantastically useful...especially for those, *cough*, uh, female flexibility testing videos from that academic research site xvideos.com.

Re:If no download link...

[DNS-and-BIND]

Blah...you forget one angle bracket in an HTML tag...stupid not previewing my own comments...the correct site is convertfiles.com

Re:If no download link...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, spam away!

Re:If no download link...

[Terrasque]

I prefer http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/ personally :)

youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.x (x being at least 5), and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

Have been using it for months now (mostly because youtube insist on cutting the streaming speed to 20kbps now and then), and it have worked perfectly. Put the urls in a text file, point the script to the file, and off it goes.

And yet, there is no announcement on the main page

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they trying to save bandwidth. They could make ad money right>?

Won't someone please think of the kittens?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the near future people will have to rely on what few hilarious kitten videos remain on other services like youtube. It will take days to weeks for society to produce new kitten-based content to replace what will be lost when these servers go dark.

Rick Springfield - I'm Going Down

[Anonymous Coward]

They had until the end of the bloody song!!!

why

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the channel called Google rape?

Re:why

[Cwix]

google grape not google rape

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

"rape" is spanish for monkfish. true story.

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

google grape not google rape

You need capitalization to see it. GRape: a new service from Google.

Preview of Rousing Speech to Preserve Video.Google

[none295]

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3011 (replace Yahoo! w/ Google)

"blip.tv" not too bad

[Animats]

I've been putting my video on blip.tv instead of YouTube. It's strictly a hosting and streaming service - no one will find your video on blip.tv unless it's linked from elsewhere. It streams nicely, though.

the FREE cloud

[nurb432]

You mean the 'free cloud' is not a good place to rely on. Paid cloud space is as 'permanent' as you want it to be.

Re:the FREE cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Paid cloud space is as 'permanent' as you want it to be.

Paid cloud space is as 'permanent' as free cloud space. Carbonite.com could go away tomorrow just as easily as Google Video.

Re:the FREE cloud

[hairyfeet]

IIRC there were plenty of people that paid for a "premium" geocities account, didn't do them much good in the end. It all comes down to how much a corp can 'monetize" the service and whether they are happy with small chunks of change or only huge buckets.

So I'd say the real problem is NO company will admit to how much monetization they require to keep a service. A service can be bringing in a million a month but if some mega corp doesn't think anything less than 4 million a month is worth messing with? Bye bye data.

If they would at least say how much the service makes and how much it is required to make one could make intelligent choices about this, but as it is there is NO WAY of knowing if the service you are using, whether you pay or not, will be here next month.

After all Google could ultimately decide that youtube simply can't be monetized to the amount they consider it worth keeping then poof! Oh Google will most likely be nice enough to give you X number of days, but it doesn't change the fact that without knowing how much they expect per month to keep a service going short of some iron clad contract that gives you compensation if they pull the plug you are at the whim of whomever is deciding what the ultimate monetization goals are.

Re:the FREE cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Paid cloud space is as 'permanent' as you want it to be.

Just off the top of my head, MSN, Yahoo, Walmart, and Apple have shutdown paid cloud services for music.

Download link? Where???

[catmistake]

We've added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save.

Google sent me an email to let me know. I don't see a download link where they say it should be.

Re:Download link? Where???

[catmistake]

If the "Download" button doesn’t appear, please follow the steps below to enable this option for your video.

Sign into your Google Video account at https://upload.video.google.com/
On the Video Status page, click the "Edit Video Info >>" link next to the video you wish to change.
Click on "Advanced Options."
Check the box beside "Allow users to download this video."
When you’re finished editing your video's information, click the "Save Video Information" button at the bottom of the page.

from here

Re:Download link? Where???

[grumbel]

After Google send the mail half my videos didn't have download links, now, a few hours later, all have them. Seems like the download feature requires some work on their side and wasn't instantly applied to every video.

Re:Download link? Where???

[omglolbah]

If you want videos archived post the links and we'll add it to the central download queue for the Archive.org downloading effort :)

--ksh @ #googlegrape EFNet

AmieStreet

[sourcerror]

Khm... AmieStreet. Bought up by Amazon, can't access my songs anymore.

Sometimes I *want* to give them my money

[tepples]

Can you recommend where a U.S. resident can buy a lawfully made copy of the film Song of the South?

Re:Sometimes I *want* to give them my money

[kent_eh]

+1 insightful

and if some smart ass answers for that specific movie, I've got a list of dozens of others that I would buy if it were available from a legitimate source.
(of course, most of them would be public domain by now under the original rules, but that's another debate)

Re:Sometimes I *want* to give them my money

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Wars Christmas special, amirite?

Re:Sometimes I *want* to give them my money

[kevinmenzel]

Is it banned from import? The movie WAS released lawfully in Japan on VHS, Beta, and Laserdisc - and as NTSC-J is essentially compatible with NTSC - one could, I assume, legally acquire it that way. Similarly I would imagine that you would legally be allowed to import a whole PAL setup, should you need that, or SECAM, and players for each of the regions... I mean, I'm not sure of that, but I do believe that if you were willing to undergo the inconvenience of traveling to foreign locations, purchasing an item which is legal to purchase there, then, subject to restrictions preventing importing that item for personal use, you would legally be allowed to then carry that item back with you, and play it in the United States. It woudln't be easy, it wouldn't be cheap, but it would very likely be legal. Or you guys could just vote for some party that isn't Republican or Democrat that might actually get your country out of the copyright situation that you're in and allow you to break DRM for personal use on legitimate copies. So... I think your question confuses inconvenient with illegal / impossible. Unless of course the importing of the necessary devices (not required for Song of the South specifically) is in fact illegal, in which case, yes, you would have some problems playing back material that is in some way region locked, or in an invompatible format (PAL or something).

Why Doesn't Google Move It All to YouTube?

[Doc Ruby]

Why doesn't Google just make all the Google Video content available as YouTube videos instead? Why not even keep redirecting Google Video URLs to the converted YouTube version? It seems like a lot more work for Google to manage the shutdown than to move it to YouTube, to say nothing of the work by users and lost value when video doesn't make the transition.

Re:Why Doesn't Google Move It All to YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's the law. When somebody uploaded vvideo to google videos they gave Google license to stream that video on google videos, for youtube you need to accept other using agreement or something.

Re:Why Doesn't Google Move It All to YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were the main concern, Google could put up a simple checkbox "Allow this video to be transferred to YouTube", and save all the download and re-upload hassle.

Certainly, the shutdown as implemented is less total work for Google, and makes sense if Google doesn't want the host the video anymore. But, since YouTube exists, and does what it does, one would presume that Google likes keeping piles of crap videos online.

Most likely, the Mountain View Google Video team is getting shut down, and they don't have a good relationship with the San Bruno YouTube team (since YouTiube rendered GV obsolete), so the teams can't work together and are making users suffer for their relationship problem.

  It's like a nasty divorce; the kids suffer.

Re:Why Doesn't Google Move It All to YouTube?

[Doc Ruby]

YouTube doesn't need any relationship with GV, or for a GV team to exist, to install a "transfer this video to YouTube" on GV videos. That doesn't seem to be more work that shutting down GV and operating the phase it's in. Keeping more video in the server storage is very little work for YouTube's people. The computers don't complain about the extra work, and the extra work gives more value to YouTube's users - the reason Google operates it.

Google Video is better

[j.buesking]

Personally I like the look and feel of google video better anyway. You Tube is way to commercial for me but I still use it...

Smells Like Old Google

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, this smells of the Schmidt-era silos. "Oh, we're YouTube, not Google Video". I'm surprised this decision made it past the new Larry/Sergey management team. Maybe it was decided a few months ago. But New-Again Google should be agile enough to undecide things.

Only Your Videos

[bill_mcgonigle]

I went to check on one of the long videos I've recommended to folks and there was no download button. It seems that's only there for your own videos. Which seems odd, didn't Google Video used to always have a download button, for people who don't know how to find Flash cache files?

Anyway, it wasn't clear to me from the summary that this is only for your own files. Abandoned videos will be abandoned, apparently.

But, hey, good news, a better quality verison was on YouTube. This might even be the longest video I've ever seen on YouTube. (p.s. good documentary for history and/or economics geeks).

Re:Only Your Videos

[lerxstz]

I was scrolling through here looking for the easiest way to save the videos. I saw your link, and without knowing what video it was, clicked on it, and it was EXACTLY the video I was wanting to keep from google video. DoublePlusSpooky.

I agree, it's highly recommended...for conspiracy theorists as well.

Cheers for posting the link!

Re:Only Your Videos

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you don't have a media download plugin. The one I use is currently the second most downloaded Firefox plugin, but there are many types available for all major browsers. For non protected media, like Youtube, these work great (and are free). For protected media, like Hulu, the programs are more complicated and usually cost (not recommended).

Re:Only Your Videos

[omglolbah]

Post the google video link and we'll add it to the central download queue for the Archive.org downloading effort :)

--ksh @ #googlegrape EFNet

Invalid Request

[BlueBlasphemy]

When I click on the "Video Status" links, both on the linked page & in the email that was sent to me by Google, it takes me to a Google Accounts page which only says "Invalid Request". Is anyone else getting this?

lost confidence

[e**(i pi)-1]

I'm also surprised that it was pulled so fast. Google video had some nice features and was much cleaner than you tube. They initially got the social networking right and good videos showed up first. I would have thought, that only a bankrupt or sold company would trigger such a shutdown. This is a healthy company pulling content and there was no data disaster at work. I lost even more confidence in such free services. What will be tragic in the future that many organizations do not know any more how to be independent because everything has evaporated into the cloud and so much more IT culture got lost or outsourced. Most will no more know what an editor or what a backup is. I would not be surprised if in 20 years, Cloud services will be hated like drug dealers: they have given away free stuff until most customers and companies are dependent. At that point, when all local IT culture has been wiped out, they can charge whatever they want.

Re:lost confidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast? They haven't been taking uploads for almost two years, that's practically an eternity in internet time. Hell, I'd almost forgotten Google Video was still around.

Um, about that...

[MrEricSir]

Just like photos never get removed on paid Flickr accounts, or Microsoft never loses Sidekick data. Right?

Oh wait...

Re:Um, about that...

[MikeBabcock]

Paid Flickr accounts run by people who read the Terms of Service almost never have problems.

PS nobody ever claimed these were where you should store the only copies of your data.

Hello :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets save it all or the good parts.

  Love and equality for all.

This is a disgrace.

[elucido]

Google is going to cancel one of the best video services on the internet because it doesn't have the same domain name as YouTube? There are lots of great videos which are on Google video because they are over an hour long. On Youtube they are broken up into many chunks.

What is Google going to do? Erase them all? All they have to do is transfer the goddamn videos to youtube or let us do it at the click of a button. This on top of them forcing us to give them our cellphone numbers for authentication are two reasons why Google is falling out of favor in terms of Youtube.

Re:This is a disgrace.

[belg4mit]

A) Nobody said anything about cell phones, they just asked for a phone number
B) You don't have to give it. I left the filed blank without any problems.

Helping if you don't have massive bandwidth avail.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to pitch in and help if I could, but didn't have massive bandwith or storage to offer - turns out you can help by scraping Google Video for links.

Here's how:

Note: This will only work on Linux machines with X running - you can't run it on headless servers due to phantomjs requirements.

1 - Get and build phantomjs (a headless web browser) by doing the following:
        - Install build-essential, git and libqtwebkit-dev if necessary
        - Create a directory called phantomjs or something
        - In the terminal go into your new directory and run the following command to get the phantomjs source code:
                git clone https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
        - Build phantomjs by issuing the command:
                qmake && make
        - Move the phantomjs binary somewhere in your path by issuing the command:
                cd bin && sudo mv ./phantomjs /usr/bin

2 - Create a folder called gvscript and download the file with the list of Google Video related pages to scrape: http://199.48.254.90/at/google_video_related.gz
        - Extract the above downloaded file (Right-click and Extract To.. or use tar -zxvf ./google_video_related.tar.gz)

3 - In a terminal, navigate to the folder where you extracted the google_video_related file (above) and run the following command to help scrape Google Video:
        while : ; do ./related.sh ; done

4 - Leave this script running, and head on over to #ggtesting on EFnet (IRC) if you need any assistance or in case the script has any issues. The script scrapes each page for related videos and sends them off to an archiveteam server. It takes very little processing and bandwidth on your end (a couple of kb/sec, if that) and seems to work just fine.

Re:Helping if you don't have massive bandwidth ava

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops!

Corrected google_video_related.tar.gz link: http://199.48.254.90/at/google_video_related.tar.gz

The Pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

Links to it there are?

One answer

[trawg]

It's possible that Google have looked at the Google Video stats and seen that only a small proportion of videos are actually watched. For them to assume everything is still valid, worthwhile content people care about and move it over is probably a decent chunk of work, not to mention all the resources it would consume to do so.

So, putting the onus on the people who actually care about the video to do something with it is a pretty big cost-saver for them. I agree it would still be nice of them to do it though, even as a temporary measure so it's not "lost" when they down the service.

Re:One answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Google really worry about the wasted space?

Re:One answer

[adolf]

For a company that gives away several gigabytes of email storage for free to anyone who bothers to sign up, who also keeps several copies in RAM of any document which they can manage to crawl across on Teh Intarwebs, and who is busily trying to photograph every city street and make the results available for free, I really don't think that the amount of space consumed by Google Video is really significant in any meaningful way.

Just a guess, of course.

Re:One answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I doubt it's space. Far more likely to be security, I suspect - it's bad form to keep legacy programs eternally connected to the Interwebz unless the methods for interacting with them are bulletproof. If nobody's manning Google Video any more, then it might just be stale and a year out of date requiring patches & stuff. (Alternatively, somebody is manning Google Video still, and they want to move them elsewhere.)

Re:One answer

[Kumiorava]

Yes. If they didn't they wouldn't be shutting down Google Video.

Re:One answer

[Doc Ruby]

Moving the video content to YouTube, as I said, would make your risk disappear.

Re:One answer

[Doc Ruby]

Google caches all kinds of content across the Internet, including media files, regardless of the frequency with which they're downloaded. I don't think the relative unpopularity of GV content determined its value in keeping. Especially since the primary factor in its unpopularity was being locked up in GV instead of in YouTube.