Google Seeks Search Deals For TikTok and Instagram Videos

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've ever tried searching on Google for one of those TikTok or Instagram videos all your friends are gushing about -- such as sea shanties or the Renegade dance -- you'll notice something. The videos don't show up. Google is trying to fix that -- but there's no guarantee its efforts will succeed. Google executives have been quietly negotiating with their counterparts at the video apps' parent companies, ByteDance for TikTok and Facebook for Instagram, to get the data it needs to index and rank videos, according to three people who were briefed about the discussions. Right now, the best results users typically see when they search are previews of videos from Google-owned YouTube, which at times hosts lower-quality copies or ripoffs of TikTok and Instagram videos. The talks show how Google is trying to keep its search engine relevant with more users as it faces new competition and regulatory threats.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Does that mean that it will be cancelled before being launched this time?

Hmm....

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

If only there was some kind of standardized method these platforms could use to make their sites indexable! Some kind of 'metadata' and 'sitemap' that could be parsed... nah, that's crazy!

Re:

[egr]

Why would you want to help your competition? Since they all are powered by ads, my guess is that no one once to give a slice of the cake to google for free. My guess is that google will have to shell out a hefty fee to get that information if anyone is crazy enough to give it away.

No please

[ArchieBunker]

You already return 10 minute YouTube videos that really amount to 10 seconds of readable text.

Re:

[Luckyo]

They tried to make an actual competitor to tiktok on youtube in May this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

As far as I know, it crashed and burned, ending up being mostly tiktok reposts.

Google is acting like they don't know how to index

[maybe111]

because the government asked them to?

Google continues towards irrelevant search results

[Fly Swatter]

Their search results are already useless half of the time, if this goes through it can be two thirds of the time.

-Is there such thing as progress on the internet, or just continued downfall?

If you've ever

[nospam007]

"...tried searching on Google for one of those TikTok or Instagram videos all your friends are gushing about"

No, I didn't, I don't and I never will.