Google Video as a Search tool and YouTube as an Entertainment Destination

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Google announced on Thursday that they are adding YouTube videos to searches onto its video service Google Video. Google, which acquired YouTube in 2005 for $1.65 Billion(about £880m), say that Google Video would be a pure search engine for videos and leave the video sharing to YouTube. This allows Google to differentiate YouTube from its Google Video Service allowing them to preserve and maintain their own seperate identities and allow them to focus on their respective strengths.

According to Google vice-president Salar Kamangar

” Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted” .
“YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide”.
“YouTube, we’ve stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately”.

Users performing a search on Google home page could already find liks to videos hosted on YouTube which was not the case until recently where a search on Google video only yielded video from the site itself. YouTube videos will now appear in the Google Video Search index and when users click on the thumbnails, they will be taken to YouTube’s website.In this example of searching for Tony Blair, the first eight results are hosted on YouTube.

This shift in direction of Google Videos allows Google to target its core area of strength “search” and aims to turn into a service where you can search for online video content irrespective of where it might be hosted.  It also allows Google to shift its financial muscle over promotions and content deals or lawsuits on just YouTube and support it by providing access to search, innovation and other monetization platforms. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to “broadcast themselves. It is also an indirect acknowledgement of the sheer popularity of YouTube over Google Videos. In January, YouTube drew 38 million visitors vs. Google Video’s 20.4 million, per Nielsen//NetRatings. YouTube boasts a much more engaged audience that spent 38 minutes there, as opposed to 7 minutes on Google Video

This development also might result in the shift to premium high quality video content being hosted on YouTube along with user generated content instead of Google Videos. These videos could then have high quality ads and might offer them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their Adsense sites. As a video search engine, Google Video will compete with startups like Blinkx, Truveo, CastTV and other offerings from AOL and Yahoo. I also hope that Google will play it fair and not promote YouTube videos over their competitors such as Metacafe, Daily Motion and others.

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