Google Video Accepts Uploads
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Extending its reach again, Google begins accepting files for its developing video service and lays out plans to support playback, downloads and paid access to videos.
Whether they come from home-movie buffs or Hollywood producers, Google wants to collect digital video files in order to push its video-search service beyond broadcast television. Diverging from the video-search approaches of its competitors, Google Inc. on Wednesday began accepting video uploads directly from content owners. While none of the submissions will be immediately available in the Google Video service, Google officials confirmed that they plan to eventually let users search, preview, download and play the submitted video files. Google co-founder Larry Page previewed the video submission program last week during a talk at the 2005 National Show, a cable industry trade show held in San Francisco.Google Video launched in January. So far, the beta service has focused on indexing the closed-captioning content and metadata from select broadcast television programs.
Click here to read more about video in multimedia searches.
Googles video submission program, though, signals digital-media ambitions that stretch beyond traditional Web search.
As part of its plans, Google is allowing content owners to charge a fee for users to play back videos. Google, of Mountain View, Calif., will earn a small revenue share from those fees in order to cover costs, Feikin said.
Google also plans to provide a preview to the videos through Google Video, while also giving content owners some choice about the way a video is made available. Along with being able to charge a fee, content owners can add a URL to video files so that users are directed to their Web sites, according to a Google FAQ on the upload program.
The submitter must own the copyright to the video, and Google plans to review submissions. It is not accepting pornographic and obscene content.
To help in indexing the videos, Google allows content owners to include metadata, captions and transcripts with their submissions.
Google will accept video files in a range of formats, including QuickTime, Windows Media and RealVideo, though it prefers video files that are submitted as MPEG4 or MPEG2 files.
Feikin declined to provide details about how Google will offer playback of video, such as through a third-party player or an application it is developing. Google also didnt provide a time line for when uploaded videos would be live on the Google Video service.
"This is really just one step in a larger effort to be open and inclusive about what type of video were going to include," she said. "We want to be able to work with content owners of all varieties and in all formats."
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As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.
