Google Video

Google Video now has their own video viewer, for those with Windows 2000 or later.

So now, you can search for a string of text, that is contained in the audio portion of a video. When you see a picture of a video, you can click on it. You can then look at "snapshots" of the video, and on some videos, you can simply play the video. The video then plays right inside of your browser, without using Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media Player.

I mentioned earlier that you can upload your own videos to Google, and you can put a price on watching that video as well. I think, in the very near future, Google will have a system in place where anyone can load a video and decided what to charge to play that video. Google will handle the financial transactions, as well as serving up the video, which can be difficult from a speedy server perspective.

So, right now, there are many searchable videos that can not be played, because they are probably waiting for the financial piece to come into play. For example, there are C-SPAN videos up there, but you can't play them yet.

This is probably the beginning of something big, being able to purchase an old TV show to watch, or news broadcast, or even a movie. I've often wondered why Google has not yet gotten into the web site hosting business, but perhaps the video hosting business will be even bigger and more profitable.