Thoughts on Google Video Upload (Beta) Launch
Lots of interesting Google topics recently. Yesterday, Google launched Video Upload, inviting uploaded video to be indexed on Google in the future.
This is fundamentally different from Google Search as it exists today, in that
- Content needs to be explicitly uploaded to Google vs being spidered automatically
- All indexed content has a claimed owner (need a Gmail account to upload)
- Licensing information is built into the search metadata at Google rather than at the source
It’s unclear to me whether Google becomes the primary content server or if only metadata is served to video search clients, leaving the actual content delivery to the owner. Although Google currently makes a cached copy of web content, today’s searches are normally directed to the source URL rather than being served from the Google cache. Turning the Google infrastructure into a global media server seems like a plausible direction to consider, though.
This also seems to lay the groundwork for something like an Apple iTunes Store for video and other media, with content from both individuals and commercial organizations.
More details on the Google Video Upload FAQ
What is Google Video?
Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Currently, Google Video lets you search a growing archive of televised content — everything from sports events to dinosaur documentaries to news programs. In addition to televised content, we’re now accepting video from anyone who wants to upload content to us. Uploaded content will not be immediately available to users searching Google Video as this is just the submission stage of the program. But (if you’ll pardon the pun) stay tuned.
What is the Google Video upload program?
The upload program lets you submit videos electronically to Google Video, as long as you own the necessary rights (including copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and any other relevant rights for your content). Just sign up for an account and use our upload tool to send your videos to Google. The program is still in beta so you won’t see your videos live on Google Video immediately.
To make sure that your video is submitted properly, please read below about preferred file formats and our approval process. Videos may not go live if they’re not approved or if we’re unable to accept the format.
Initial thoughts on contributing video:
- From a commercial point of view, searchable video would be a great benefit, provided you didn’t lose control of the content.
- From an individual artist’s point of view, this would be a huge win, since there are so few distribution mechanisms for short films and multimedia projects.
- From a casual user’s (family videos) point of view, I’m a little unclear. There are clearly people happy to have their entire life published to the world in perpituity, but I suspect this is the minority. For my own photos and videos I’d like to be able to search, but not to have the content accessible to the world at large. So a personal version of this might be useful.
Comments at Slashdot, BoingBoing
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