14 June 2007

Google web-wide video search and other video news

After its historic acquisition of YouTube last year, Google is now ready to tie the service closer to the Google products family.

YouTube users are now given the option to link their YouTube account with their Google account. And users with a Google account who have so far not had an account with YouTube can now sign up with YouTube through their Google Account.

YouTube also launched a beta version of their video page layout which users can try out by clicking on a link on top of the video meta data information box - or, for a techie approach, just add &v3 at the end of the URL.


















The difference between the old and the new layout is mostly concentrated in the details. The video meta data box has been moved below the video player and a channel box has been put into its place instead; this contains the option to see more videos from that particular user. The Director videos that were previously found on the furthest right hand side of the old page have disappeared from the beta design.

Also new on YouTube (but not part of the beta test) is a bar on the top of the YouTube homepage that shows videos that are being watched right now. This feature uses the same active sharing technology that was recently introduced to show other users who are watching the same video as you at any given time. But you'll need to be quick if one of these videos catches your eye, as the videos in the 'videos being watched right now' bar change very quickly.

More news comes from Google Video, which has now turned into a fully fledged video search engine. The Google Video Beta service, previously dwarfed by YouTube in many respects, now shows a frame when you click on a search result that is similar to the one that appears when you search for images on Google.







You can rate videos inside the frame, watch related videos and share videos by mailing the page link through your Google Mail account. There is also an arrow that lets you see the previous or the next search result and a link to remove the frame completely, similar to that found in Google image search.

When you upload a video to Google Video, you can now also link directly to interesting parts of the video by specifying the exact time within the video.

The Google video search index contains not only videos from Google's own services, YouTube and Google Video, but also from third-party sites such as Metacafe, iFilm, Grouper, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Break.com, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Veoh, AOL Video, Jumpcut, Revver, Guba and the BBC. The search results are heavily dominated by videos from YouTube, however, which contains an estimated 42.5 million videos as opposed to 2.3 million on Google Video, three million on Yahoo! Video and two million on MySpace.

Currently Google Video still carries some resemblance to YouTube in terms of its features. It is possible to upload videos, leave a comment about other users' videos and embed HTML code to your uploaded video onto your blog or website. YouTube has all these community features among many more and it also contains about 20 times as many videos.

Many expect that Google Video will now place a stronger strategic focus on search features like video previews. These are already available in the Google Video search results for videos hosted on either Google Video or YouTube, but videos hosted on third party sites are currently listed as thumbnail images. It is also likely that features from Google Video will be integrated into Google's "Universal Search" results in the near future.

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