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Google Businesses Media The Internet

Google Readies Platform for Video Distribution 228

Posted by Zonk from the i'm-waiting-for-the-google-pet-store dept.
Eric writes "According to BetaNews, 'Google is preparing a video distribution platform that provides a complete ecosystem of services for content producers, publishers and end-users.' The first phase of its video upload program rolled out today, and 'content owners will be able to control distribution rights themselves, even setting a price for their video clips. Eventually, users will be able to search, preview, purchase and play videos directly from within Google.'"
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Google Readies Platform for Video Distribution More

Google Readies Platform for Video Distribution

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  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elid ( 672471 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .dopi.ile.> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:16AM (#12233348)
    A few questions:
    1) Will TV networks sign on to this? Will we able to download last night's episode of 24 for a small fee? How much will they charge?
    2) Why aren't these files DRM-less (see the article)? But Google is an innovator, and maybe they can come up with something fair (though fair and DRM seem to be mutually exclusive nowadays...).
    • Why aren't these files DRM-less (see the article)? But Google is an innovator, and maybe they can come up with something fair (though fair and DRM seem to be mutually exclusive nowadays...).

      There is no "fair" DRM. Fair use has restrictions in itself. There is no reason to mandate more restrictions on top of that.
      • Grat. Now Big Brother gets to snoop my phone-cam movies. Or you didn't know that th eGoogle offices in Vienna, VA were in the next town over from Reston?
    • *1) Will TV networks sign on to this? Will we able to download last night's episode of 24 for a small fee? How much will they charge?*

      last nights? never(well, in short term future anyhow), maybe if the show wasn't a hit series. but they know that they could sell it to you couple of months afterwards as well, without making a theoretical dent in their first night viewer ratings.

    • You already can download [btefnet.net] the last episode of any popular TV show. I downloaded the last Office episode in 10 minutes on my crappy cable modem connection!
    • The TV networks won't upload any content without DRM, hence its inclusion by Google. The interesting question is price.

      If the networks are stupid they will assume that downloads can only cannibalize their DVD sales. This is a natural assumption. TV series on DVD appear to be a hot commodity recently. The natural resolution to this assumption is that downloads should appear months after DVD release and cost a lot.

      If they are smart they will realize that they are actually competing against P2P networks.

  • Come on submitter... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:16AM (#12233350) Homepage Journal
    Get with the program. You need to jazz up your submission a lot. Your's is much too calm.

    If a product is not going to "Kill", "Murder" or "Burninate" the opposition, I'm not listening.

  • Will it work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:16AM (#12233351)
    It looks like Google may have a solution to the problem of indexing video media on the internet; host the content yourself and request the meta-data from the uploader themselves. Then you can easily index the meta-data to make it searchable. It sure beats trying to index any available content scattered across the web with no easy way to extract useful meta-data, but it certainly has the downside that you need to use Google to distribute your video. What if other search engines jump on the bandwagon; we'll have to search all of them to find the media we're looking for, because they won't share their indexes (Which are the valuable part, after all). It could get rather non-customer friendly if we're not careful.

    • Re:Will it work? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bitingduck ( 810730 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:08AM (#12233926) Homepage
      But if all the meta-data is self reported, you run a huge risk of people spamming you with things that they report as britney videos but are really sales pitches for viagra or something.
    • "What if other search engines jump on the bandwagon"

      what other search engines?

    • Wow, this is so cool. I went to video.google.com [google.com] and enter the search word "apple". Then I clicked on one of the results [google.com]. I get screenshots of a TV news cast, with transcription. Examples of the transcription:

      "Money scope" reporter David Louie live at a very ripe Apple headquarters in cupper Tino.

      Steve jobs is doing here at Apple what Carlie If I rhino owned dreamed at hp.
      The Mack Mini made its adieu.

      From the mistakes, it looks like the audio is being transcribed by a computer. Despite the many mistakes

      • Sorry, I should have looked at the help page [google.com]:

        Sometimes the transcript text is garbled or has spelling and grammatical errors. Why is this?

        The text we use for searching Google Video is captured from the closed captioning of each program as it airs. Closed captioning isn't always accurate and errors can occur during the transmission. Let us know if you find a program with serious errors in the text.

  • Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)

    by teiresias ( 101481 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:17AM (#12233368)
    please be sure you own the rights to the works you upload

    I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle for this service to overcome. I think this would be a great service for smaller production teams or individuals looking to release their creations (although there are a number of services that already do this I believe). But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.

    pending our approval process

    so, is it someones job to look through every video when it's uploaded? To catch any copyright infringement. Again, this seems like a real problem for this and any other similar service.

    • Re:Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:22AM (#12233413)
      But to me, this new service will be largely deluged with people looking to trade bootleg videos, pr0n, etc, as again almost all the other similar services are.

      Well of course porn will be a part of it as that industry is typically the first to adopt new technology as part of their operations. Of course people will absue the system as you said but hopefully some industries will embrace it as well which could lift the validity of it.

      This could be a very good thing but I really have to say that if people do cloud the waters with copyrighted material the networks, RIAA, MPAA, etc, will do everything in their power to discredit it and bring it down.

      This is a gutsy move by Google.

      • Re:Copyright (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Punboy ( 737239 )
        Yes, it is a gutsy move. But that's really what Google specializes in. I mean look at GMail. Everyone thought it was a hoax cause it was so far out there (and the fact that it was released on April Fool's). But now most of the major email providers have followed suit, and Google recently bumped the storage up to 2GB (and climbing by the second). If anyone could really pull this off it'd be Google. or Apple. Perhaps the two should collaborate.

    • are you sure? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by qortra ( 591818 )
      Google is the Search King. Don't you think they'll be able to create an automated system for straining out bad submissions (porn or copyright violations)? I mean, even if the the title or description of a video submission itself aren't incriminating enough, the probably have plenty of other methods for getting context about a video. The probability that a violating video already exists on the net is large, so they could make a system to identify a video by general characteristics (obviously a digest-hash
      • so they could make a system to identify a video by general characteristics (obviously a digest-hash would not be appropriate across formats, but I'm sure there are other ways of doing it).

        Suppose you had some kind of "hash" function which was loosly (note two oh's) based on the color of subdivided portions of an image. You then have a sequence of hashes that represents a video. Search your database index for a similar sequence of image hashes.

        Now suppose you could create a hash of, say, five seconds

  • Words (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:18AM (#12233371) Journal
    I always love it when words like "Ecosystem" are used to describe business models. It gives me a chuckle, and I know not to waste my time reading the FA.

  • You can sign in using your Gmail account (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:19AM (#12233379)
    I'm sure everyone on Slashdot has one by now, so use it to skip the sign up process.

  • WTF (Score:5, Funny)

    by cca93014 ( 466820 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:19AM (#12233387) Homepage
    Google now have an ecosystem.

    Fan-fucking-tastic.

    When are /. going to start distributing "-1 - Google Sycophantia" mod points?

    I, for one, welcome our "we're not evil, but we are a publicly owned corporation, just like all the other fuckers; give it a few years before we turn into another bunch of wankers" overlords.

  • The Google Universe (Score:5, Funny)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:19AM (#12233390)
    Ahh, Google, the emacs of Web services.

  • Verified uploads... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:22AM (#12233422)
    Although I love the idea, particularly the part about pay videos if you want, the manual verifying of video uploads by some Google lackey isn't seriously cumbersome. I submitted a video yesterday (late afternoon) and it's still not verified 12 hours later. Unless this drastically changes, I can't see this being used to quickly put up new content for your site or anything where time sensitive material is a factor.

    • Distributed verification Re:Verified uploads... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jackDuhRipper ( 67743 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:15AM (#12233992) Homepage
      Instead of a "Google lackey," what if they implement a distributed verification people-network of "cotent category experts" a la About.com [about.com]'s Guide Model?

      i.e. One or more folks are in charge of Kids' birthday videos, one or more in charge of original animation, and 10,313 are in charge of the various porn categories.

      They are "trained," "paid" based on performance, and are moderated (e.g. if copyrighted works slip through on their watch, they are somehow penalized).

      The verification bottleneck opens up significantly without Google's staff of Full Time Employees expanding exponentially.

      The Google Network ...

  • Google Uploader (Score:5, Informative)

    by boredMDer ( 640516 ) <pmohr+slashdot@boredmder.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:23AM (#12233426)
    The Google Uploader app (https://upload.video.google.com/Google%20Video%20 Uploader%20Installer.exe [google.com]) is, of course, Windows only.

    I wonder how long before someone makes a third party tool to do this on Linux/Mac?

  • Too many products and betas? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by baadger ( 764884 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:25AM (#12233453)
    It's alarming how accurately the Google Grid [robinsloan.com] seems to be forming.

    This sounds great, but I wouldn't mind Google Image search results that didn't keep returning 404's.

    In a recent recruitment video [google.com] that featured on GoogleBlog [google.com] the nice lady says Google is all about "ambitious ideas, fast responses, big acheivements" but it seems to me they want to pump out new services as testaments to what the Googlers are capable of and show off their cool attitude..without actually producing a well polished and maintained product.

    Who hasn't noticed degradation of Google search results or lots and lots 404's on image search?

    I just hope the grid doesn't crumble and burn.

    • Re:Too many products and betas? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Momoru ( 837801 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:34AM (#12233546) Homepage Journal
      Agreed, they are all over the place...trying to do everything. I still don't think their search is as good as it could be (See Clusty [clusty.com] for a useful new type of search). They seem to be more like a bunch of intellectual kids who won the lottery and want to spend all their time coming up with neat ideas instead of actually worrying about giving returns to the shareholders who bankrolled them. I'm sure that's what alot of you all like about them so much, but if it fails it will ruin future companies that want to be ran like this.
      • I can't belive this.... For every other company, people bitch how the company is no longer inovative and only worries about ROI to its investors... And here's some wank who's essentially complaning that Google isn't worrying enough about it's shareholders' ROI... fuck man...
      • They seem to be more like a bunch of intellectual kids who won the lottery and want to spend all their time coming up with neat ideas instead of actually worrying about giving returns to the shareholders who bankrolled them.

        Coming up with lots of neat ideas is what's driving their stock price up and giving returns to the shareholders.

        • True in the short term new ideas cause buzz, which causes the price to rise, but all it takes is one quarter of earnings to be below expectations because they had unexpected costs from buying 30 different random companies to send the price plunging
    • Hi, 1996 called, they want their starry-eyed optimism and wanky neologisms back, if you don't mind.

      Pfft.

      --grendel drago
    • In a recent recruitment video that featured on GoogleBlog the nice lady says Google is all about "ambitious ideas, fast responses, big acheivements" but it seems to me they want to pump out new services as testaments to what the Googlers are capable of and show off their cool attitude..without actually producing a well polished and maintained product.

      Am I the only person who thinks that Google's recruitment video is a bit creepy?
  • Snow Crash [slashdot.org]

  • read the TOS agreement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tech-hawger ( 874902 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:28AM (#12233477) Homepage
    If your video is too poular, they can charge you for the bandwidth it uses...i wonder if they would warn you first...
    • If a video really becomes that popular, Google should automatically implement a revenue sharing model on that video, where Google gets reimbursed for the bandwidth and the publisher would get his fair cut.

      • Wait, you're saying that Google should pay the producer for providing popular video. And the grandparent poster is saying that the producer should pay Google for hosting popular video.

        I'm so confused.

        --grendel drago

  • Not a Netflix killer. What else could it be? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:28AM (#12233482)
    My TV will one day be hooked into the internet and be able to download movies on demand, I'm sure, but until then, I'd rather use NetFlix to show my movies on my television set. Watching movies on my computer monitor isn't as good.

    So what does this point to for Google? There might certainly be a market for Indie film distribution via Google. This would dramatically reduce distribution costs and open a whole new market for indie films.

    • I've gotten used to watching movies on the monitor. (I've got a pretty sweet 19" flatscreen, so it's rather easy on the eyes.) I can't go back to the low resolution and blurry edges of a regular television now.

      --grendel drago

  • From TFFAQ (Score:5, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:31AM (#12233511) Homepage Journal
    https://upload.video.google.com/video_faq.html

    # Can I charge for playback of my video?

    Yes. Or you can allow users to play your video for free. This is totally up to you and your video distribution goals. As the content owner, you decide whether you'd like to give away your video for free or charge a price that you set for it. If you do charge a price, Google will take a small revenue share to cover some of our costs.

    # How is my content protected?

    Google takes the security of your content very seriously. We've put a number of measures in place to prevent copying or sharing of your content. For more information on our copyright policies and procedures, please read the Copyright section of this FAQ.

  • Dark Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:33AM (#12233533) Homepage
    This might explain their recent fiber-optic buying spree [com.com].

  • Google's taking over (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kimos ( 859729 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.somik'> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:35AM (#12233548) Homepage
    They're breaking into the biggest industry on the net. Porn. First images now video...
  • Sounds like they're trying to be the cafepress.com of online video distribution. Should be interested.

    And wouldn't this last article [slashdot.org] mean they'll have some competition?

    Curiouser and curiouser. Is video delivery the next big thing on the internet?

  • TOS (Score:5, Informative)

    by BenBenBen ( 249969 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:46AM (#12233677)
    'content owners will be able to control distribution rights themselves, even setting a price for their video clips.'

    From the TOS:
    By accepting this Agreement and uploading Your Authorized Content to Google, you are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content
    • Sounds scary but an important detail from that sentence is non-exclusive which makes their TOS similar to an open source license like the BSD.

    • From the TOS:

      By accepting this Agreement and uploading Your Authorized Content to Google, you are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content

      The key words in that being, "non-exclusive".

      That whole paragraph of jargon essentially says they're allowed to provide the damn servi

    • ... and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content

      Only at Google would a license agreement include the right to create algorithms based on your content. :)

      --Bruce

  • Makes sense to me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jessmeister ( 225593 )
    I have to say it sounds like an extremely interesting twist on the distribution of video content. For me to be able to upload content and distribute it for free is quite amazing. This means they will not only be gaining access to the subscribers or paying customers but also the families etc who are going to use it to share their videos. It benefits everyone. Google gets more impressions to sell advertising on and content producers get an easy and efficient market place/distribution system. Add the advanced

  • Invisible Movies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:57AM (#12233801) Homepage Journal
    How does Google know it's "video"? Can't I just pipe my own CDs into the audio tracks of a blank MPG2/4 file? Then I can listen to my own music anywhere, over those famously fat Google pipes. This is fair use of content that I legitimately own, even according to the entertainment industry before the Supreme Court [zdnet.com]. By extension, can't I rename any file "..mp4", and use Google to distribute it? They're not going to watch all these movies, are they?
    • "should have used the 'Preview' button!"

      -> rename any file "<whatever>.<original-extension>.mp4"

  • Don't be evil? (Score:3, Informative)

    by uttaddmb ( 856927 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:57AM (#12233805) Homepage
    Be careful with the TOS, though [jacobian.org]. Most of the stuff is the standard Draconian crap (i.e., "we can do whatever we want with your stuff"), but most notable is this bit: "If You have not designated a price for Your Authorized Content and We incur extraordinary costs and expenses in hosting, indexing and displaying Your Authorized Content, we may charge a fee in order to defray these costs." So if you release a popular free video, Google may charge you for the bandwidth? I'll stick with Ourmedia [ourmedia.org] for the free media distribution, thanks.

  • So much for Do no Evil (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bentfork ( 92199 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @10:59AM (#12233825)
    3. Use of Content. By accepting this Agreement and uploading Your Authorized Content to Google, you are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content in order to (i) host the Authorized Content on Google's servers, (ii) index the Authorized Content; and (iii) display the Authorized Content, in whole or in part in the territory(ies) designated in the Uploading Instructions, in connection with Google products and services now existing or hereafter developed, including without limitation in products developed for syndication. This license gives Google the right to copy, excerpt, distribute and display Your Authorized Content via both streaming and progressive downloading technologies, and to display limited excerpts of Your Authorized Content for no fee to the end user. Google reserves the right to display advertisements in connection with any display of Your Authorized Content. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Google is not required to host, index, or display any Authorized Content uploaded, and may remove or refuse to host, index or display any Authorized Content. Google is not responsible for any loss, theft or damage of any kind to the Authorized Content. Sounds a bit evil to me...
    • Well, it could certainly be used for evil.

      It could also be used to protect themselves from a variety of possible legal concerns that might arise from their normal operations.

      I work with content and content management systems and see similar clauses in most of our contracts with subject matter experts, authors and provisioning contractors. I'm not a lawyer myself, but have asked our legal staff about why these are included, and the consensus answer I get from them is that they save considerable legal effo
    • Did you ever stop to think that "hosting, caching, routing, trasmitting, storing, copying, distributing, performing, displaying, reformating, excerpting, and analyzing" are the kinds of rights they need to, say, HOST YOUR DAMN VIDEO ON THE WEB IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

  • Types of video accepted (Score:3, Informative)

    by LoverOfJoy ( 820058 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:05AM (#12233896) Homepage
    From https://upload.video.google.com/video_faq.html#ove rview4 [google.com]

    "What types of videos are you accepting?

    We accept any type of video content, with these restrictions:

    * You must own all necessary rights to the content, including copyrights toboth the video and the audio.
    * You must be able to upload the video to us electronically.
    * The video must not contain pornographic or obscene material.

    The content may be reviewed prior to being made available online. If we cannot use it, we'll let you know."

  • Reminds me of EPIC (Score:3, Informative)

    by mejesster ( 813444 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:10AM (#12233949)
    There's this neat little flash animation called EPIC, about the future of Google. It's been around for a little while now and is eerily accurate. You can find it here: http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ [robinsloan.com]
  • I wonder why Google skipped over the idea of doing this for music distribution? This would be a killer app for me, and I'm sure a lot of other musicians too.

    1) Upload MP3 content.
    2) Pick price
    3) Marketing / advertising / word of mouth
    4) User access, pay, download
    5) Profit???

    • So they should let people upload Mp3s and Google will distribute them for free!

      Why don't you just ask them to throw all thier money and stock into 1 000 000 suitcases and mail them to every lawyer in the world.

      Ok ok, the artists get to split 1 suitcase.

  • Windows Only (Score:4, Informative)

    by saddino ( 183491 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:14AM (#12233991)
    Google provides an application (the Google Video Uploader) to upload video content to their servers. As expected, the program is Windows only. So, I guess Google wants your video, as long as you're not a Mac or Linux user. ;-)

    Interestingly, all of Google's desktop applications are all Windows only. Given their hiring blitz and their well-advertised work incentives, Google could easily find Mac and Linux programmers, so the lack of support for other platforms must be intended. Other companies can make the argument that the cost is too great, but Google can clearly afford it. So, what exactly is the strategy here?

    • Re:Windows Only (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mant ( 578427 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:24AM (#12234082) Homepage

      Even if you can afford something it has an opportunity cost, and that may be too great.

      A new app Windows can use is going to bring in much more users than expanding an app to Linux or the Mac.

      So sure, maybe you spend (to pull figures out of the air) 500,000 getting the desktop apps onto Linux and the Mac, and that nets you 1 million return in greater users and so ad revenue. Or maybe you could spend that 500,000 on a new project that gets 4 million return in revenue.

      • Re:Windows Only (Score:3, Insightful)

        by saddino ( 183491 )
        I agree, but their desktop strategy is markedly different from their web application strategy, and it's not clear (to me at least) why Google wants Mac and Linux users (to wit: spending time and resources making sure GMail works in Mozilla, Firefox and Safari) on the web, but isn't interested in those very same users when it comes to desktop applications.

        As an example: How much could it cost to port their video uploader to the Mac? Maybe $50,000 to one consultant...seems like a drop in the bucket to get v
        • Mod parent up. I've got lots of video I'd like to upload but alas, no can do. I'm running a Mac at home. This may be the first oversight I've noticed from Google. Video strategy but no Mac client. Unbelievable.
    • This is screwy. I can send video by Google mail
      without anything more than a web browser. Why would
      I need anything more for this new service?
    • What's even funnier, a lot of the folks at Google have PowerBooks. However, I bet we'll see a Mac upload tool in a couple of months, just like we saw GMail and Google Maps become Safari-savvy a short time after the initial rollout. Just be patient--it totally makes sense to focus initially on the technology that 93% of their user base uses.
    • The other bizarre thing is I thought I read somewhere that all their employee's workstations ran Linux, so they almost have to go out of their way to develop the app for windows only. Their own employees can't even upload videos.

  • Focus on search? No. Agility. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:20AM (#12234040) Homepage Journal
    Anyone remembers the days when Google said how they want to focus on search and search only?
    They are certainly not focusing on it so much any more, and are adapting to the market forces. Nice and agile.

  • If you build it.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WareW01f ( 18905 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @11:28AM (#12234139)
    Markets these days (read post dot-com) are very conservative. The main issue with video distribution is noone is A) sure it will work, and B) there are business models out there *based* on the fact that you can't get the content any where else. (Think Supper Bowl commercial time slots) So you've got the one side that doesn't what to invest in something that has no (we'll say commercialy) proven market and the other end that just has no intrest.

    Enter Google

    Google starts playing with searching video. Fine. Issue is that all video on TV is copyrighted and 'Fair Use' is not what it used to be. Fine. So someone says, "Hey, lets get people to upload they're own video and we can test with that." Great. The blogger group shifts from photo blogs to video blogs. Google has content. User satisfied the strange need to document the life and times of their gerbil. Everyone is happy. You have eyes. It's a small stretch once you have content to play with management. (And management in a manor that you control, not some big company demands) It's brilliant! They are going to end up with a content base (Dude, now my rock band can distribute mp3's and our killer concert footage) and audience. It's built, the market's there. All the big companies have to do is sign up.

    Google is getting big, and I would argue that they are starting to approch the SpiderMan-great-power-great-responsibility dilemma (some may argue we're past that) Our last remaining hope is that the key mentality in leadership that is leading to Google's success is linked the good side of the force. i.e. if evil forces take over the innovation dies. (Still, anyone want to bet on if Google-AOL-TimeWarner exists a few years from now.)
  • ...and let me eat some pancakes with Google syrup on top of them for breakfast. Then I can finally get out of the 3BD/2BA Google house that I bought on Google Real Estate and head to my job at Google [insert previously independent company name here].

    I just hope my mail-order Google bride remembered to fill up the Google car before she went to her Google book club this morning. Damned, bitch. Leaving me with the Google adoption service kids every Thursday morning to be a woman.

    Where the hell is my Starb

  • Content-based video searching/indexing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @04:54PM (#12238334) Journal
    It looks like indexing will initially be manual, but it'll be interesting to see what sorts of content-based searching and indexing methods Google will end up implementing. For those unfamiliar with it, content-based methods allow for information extraction based on the actual video data, rather than manually-added metadata. Searching google scholar [google.com] and google web [google.com] for "content-based video" methods comes up with some interesting results. The current state-of-the-art can do some impressive things, but there's clearly still lots of room for improvement.

    Now that I think about it, having uploaders manually index the videos the submit is a fantastic way for Google to bootstrap an automated video indexing system.

    One neat project is Sivic & Zisserman's Video Google [ox.ac.uk] (no relation to the Google company, I think). They have a demo available where you can search for automatically-extracted objects in a movie. They also show the results of doing things like detecting Bill Murray's tie throughout the movie Groundhog Day.

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