Google Video: Now Just Another Search Engine
Would it be putting it too stongly to say YouTube killed Google Video? Maybe not. Google said way back in January that it would morph its Google Video property into a video search site, and the result of that plan is now live.
Google Video has been looking for a new lease on life since Google bought the far-more-popular YouTube for $1.65 billion last year. No reason for two competing video sites under one roof. Google says that it has the most powerful video search engine around, with the ability to comb through 60 million videos from all over the Web. That includes videos hosted at competing sites like Metacafe, iFilm, Grouper, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Break.com, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Veoh, AOL Video, Jumpcut, Revver, Guba, BBC and others.
Video search results are presented in much the same way as Google presents its Image Search results. Click one of the videos in the results, and a Google bar appears at the top of the page with info about the video and suggestions of similar videos. Below the bar is the video within the context of the site where it's hosted.
However, of the videos that come up in the search results, 90 percent or more appear to be videos hosted at either Google or YouTube. That's understandable for the YouTube videos because there are simply far more of them, but the Google videos are clearly getting preferred treatment.
My only question is this: Is Google Video still a viable destination now that it's just another search site? There must be a million other viral video link aggregator/search sites out there, like AOL Video, for instance. Why would I use a search tool that favors YouTube and Google Video, when there are others available that might bring back a more diverse set of results?
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Google VP of consumer products confirmed the change last month on UberPulse.com's site:
http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2007/05/scoop_google_to_drop_google_video_site_in_favour_of_youtube.php
i had a look and its correct, over 90 percent videos are from either youtube or google video, which makes me wonder why google even started searching other websites. i suggest to have a look at www.uvouch.com which does not give preferential treatment to just one video site. plus they have loads of cool tools that i can use on my own blogs/websites.