C|NET News.com
It seems that three players are looking at getting into the "video search" game; Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Call me short sighted, but I'm not sure I see what the fuss is about. O.K., so they're creating search facilities to allow you to find specific clips via broadband, digital and set-top services and play them on your computer or media center, but I find this version a little underwhelming. I know video-on-demand is the future, we've been waiting for it for what seems like an eternity, but this is just the beginning.
Apparantly Google's search facilities are ultra-secret. Only a handful of broadcast execs have actually seen the system, however it apears they are basing their search on the closed captions embedded in the video signal. of course, the problem there is getting permission to do that.
"The business models are too soon to tell, but everyone is interested," a source said. "First, the meetings are about, 'Don't sue us for nicking your closed captioning,' and then it's the commercial possibilities."
Microsoft, bless their little hearts, are getting ready to release in 2005, probably to get set up with their Windows XP Media Center.
I particularly like this bit.
It also is testing a system for inserting commercials into video that would be contextually relevant to the programming.
Got to find a way to pay for all those law suits.
As for Yahoo (didn't they used to be relevant?) it seems they're looking at expanding their existing, albeit archaic, search engine by tapping into XML feeds to keep up to date with what people have accessible. Of course, they're not actually 'fessing up to being involved.
Yahoo spokeswoman Stephanie Iwamasa would not confirm the existence of a Yahoo video search service.
"We have not announced any launch plans for multimedia search and do not have relationships (feeds or otherwise) with video search aggregators," she wrote in an e-mail. "Furthermore, we do not comment on rumor or speculation."
The next revolution is upon us! When they get around to it.
Striking up digital video search
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