It seems like that Google Video has disabled the feature on their video player which allows viewers to fast forward to a certain part of the video without buffering the video file first. However, YouTube’s video player still has this feature. I wonder if Google will remove that as well. (Possibly not, considering YouTube’s popularity - a YouTube Revolt might ignited!)
“Google Video is stepping back.”
[via Reddit]
Last October, Google China launched G.cn (which redirects to Google.cn), one of the shortest domain names on the web. To promote this new address, Google China partnered with several Chinese video sharing sites and started an online video challenge in November, and the winners were announced on January 6th.
I am not going to comment on this first place winning video, but I will say that there aren’t a lot of entries submitted and the judges have to pick out something.
[via GSeeker]
Google is experimenting a new way to display OneBox results - placing them in the right hand side of the AdWords section. No, Google won’t remove the ads entirely - unless they want to go out of business - the ads will still be there, only that the OneBox results will be placed under the ads when the ads are present.
For instance, no ads return for “George Bush”, so the OneBox results on placed high on the page, but when searching for keywords like “Christmas”, AdWords ads related to the query will placed before the OneBox results (News, Images, and Books).
Google has been testing something similar with SearchMash for about a year.
You can try out this experiment by copy & pasting this link into the Google homepage’s address bar, hit Enter and refresh the page (you will probably need to clear your cookies before hitting Enter though).
Google has been indexing videos from other video hosting sites for quite a while now, but most videos are from larger video sites like Metacafe, Crackle, and sometimes mixed with Break and AOL Uncut, neglecting smaller video hosting services and independent video publishers that refuse to use those services (because of the low quality video encoding).
It’s now possible to have your videos on Google Video Search with the new Google Video Sitemaps that the Google Webmaster Tools just introduced. All you need to do is create a video sitemap and submit it to Google (it would be pretty easy if you have them organized, especially in a database). Google crawls a variety formats of videos, from MPEG to WMV to RM to FLV. There are some restrictions on the sitemaps and videos though, you can find them here.
Google Video continue to degrade their home page. The latest addition to the home page is the video previewing of the most blogged, most shared, and most viewed videos on YouTube and Google Video.
Also, you can now browser the archive of the 100 most blogged, most viewed, and most shared videos of any day, week, or month after September 2007 (but before the days that haven’t yet come), and those lists can even be filtered by region.
[via Google Operating System]
Several sources report that YouTube is now testing to offer higher quality videos to some users with broadband capacities, and that they will be available to everyone in about three months.
Most viewers are interested in content itself than a higher quality. What they’ve seen through past successes, people get more fed up having to wait for buffering. It’s ‘good enough’ right now. - YouTube co-founder Steve Chen on YouTube video quality [NewTeeVee]
Many other video hosting services, like Blip.tv and Brightcove, have been supporting high quality videos for a long time. Vimeo, another video hosting site, started supporting high definition videos last month.
Even iHaochi supports high quality video hosting! (Haochi only, for now. :) )
Related: YouTube Supports Multi-Video Upload
Due to the public relations crisis from the announcement of shutting down Google Video Store, the Official Google Blog issued an update on this matter in the hope that it will fix things.
Or is this some kind of marketing strategy that Google’s trying to lure people into using Google Checkout? You know, this could be just an alternative way to give away coupons.
So Google decided to close down their Video Marketplace program that was launched in January 2006 which allows users to purchase video contents like CSI, Survior, and NBA games. Here’s the email they sent to their “valued customers” (not me):
As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.
To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $2.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days, and you can use it at the stores listed here: [Google Checkout]. The minimum purchase amount must be equal to or greater than your bonus amount, before shipping and tax.
After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.
If I understand correctly, no matter how much you spent on Google Video, you will only get $2 compensation from them. [update see below] Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing put it this way,
Imagine if these were DVDs: one day, a man from Virgin Megastore shows up at your door and says, “We’re taking away all your videos. Sorry! But we’ll give you a credit to spend at a different store. Not a credit for videos, though. Also: it expires in 60 days.”
Looks like you don’t really own the videos from Google Video, it’s the other way around: they owned you.
UPDATE: Jacobsd comments, “You actually get a credit based on what you bought…” Thanks! :)
YouTube now shows video ads in a new way…
[via InsideGoogle->Mashable]
LeeAnn Prescott reports on her HitWise blog that YouTube now has 50% more traffic than other (64 major) video sites combined! ValleyWag put together a pie chart so you can see how big a market share Google has on video sharing, comparing to other players.
read: MySpace Videos To Become MySpace TV, YouTube Competitor - TechCrunch
Thirty days ago, Google Video was only a place where you can share, and find videos from YouTube and Google Video. Then, Google started indexing videos from Metacafe. Now, Google Video gives users the ability to find more videos from video sharing sites such as MySpace, Break, Vimeo, Yahoo Video, DailyMotion and CollegeHumor. Well, you can search all over the web. With all these unfiltered videos out there, Google Video now included the SafeSearch option so you (/your kids) can watch family safe videos.
When you click on a search result, you will be send to another Google page that frames the destination page, rather than going there directly like it used to be. Sort of like how Google Images works, only that Google Video uses IFrame. You can navigate through related video using the arrow buttons or click on the thumbnails under Related videos. To rate the video, just click on the stars on the left of the top frame. Want to get back some screen-o-estate? The Collapse link allows you to minimize the top frame and the Remove link will send you to the video page.
I agree that Google Video should be focusing on what Google does best: search.
note: It seems like that you can manipulate the number of search results showing on the top frame. I am not seeing this as a security breach, though.
[via InsideGoogle, Google Operating System, and Google Blogoscoped]
I don’t know the exact number of how many videos Google Video indexed, but I think it’s somewhere between 70 to 80 million videos*. Hey, even Google can’t tell for sure: about 71,268,336, if you are sorting the videos by the upload time. However, the number changes every time you change the way you sort the videos.
Anyways, they think that Googlified has 76,009,029 videos. Wow, I could be the next YouTube, don’t you think so? :)
*including videos from MetaCafe, YouTube and Google Video.
