Google seems to be dishin’ out new products and services, left and right. Some of them make the cut, other’s don’t! There’s quite the list of services that haven’t been as fortunate as others, like the original Google Video. What happened to it anyways? I’m talking about the one released into beta back in January of 2005 which was to enable users to “search the content of television programs from leading TV content providers including PBS, the NBA, Fox News, and C-Span.” It’s been replaced by the Google Video as you know it today, where you are able to watch actual videos, instead of searching the transcripts and content as the initial version offered.
Back in January 2005, the product manager for Google Video wrote up a short snippet on the Google Blog giving his compelling reason as to why Google Video was needed. He talked about being stuck in a hotel room for a few days in Wisconsin for a wedding, trying to find something to do, and flipping through channels, “idly watching some travel show when a thought hit me: surely someone, somewhere must have produced a travel show episode about Wisconsin, maybe even about that cheese factory. But of course there was no way to find it.” Thus Google Video came along. Above is a screenshot that shows a listing of television shows that matched what you were searching for.
In their press release, Google talked about all of the cool features it was going to have, like:
- Preview page: Displays up to five still video images and five short text segments from the closed captioning of each program.
- Upcoming episodes: Shows when the program will be aired next.
- Search within the show: Enables searching for specific words within a given program.
- Program details: Offers program and episode information including channel, date and time.
- Change location: Finds the next time and channel where a program will air locally according to zip code.
After searching for a program, you could click on the results and get more detailed information. The screenshot above is an example of a result for Nightline with short snippets available at different time increments. From there, it let you know when the show would be coming on next, and the time it would air based upon your zip code. These screenshots came from an archive from what used to be the “Help” page for the original Google Video. Unfortunately or fortunately, this service didn’t last too long.
The Google Operating System blog has put together a more detailed list that includes other Google services that just couldn’t make it… like:
- Google Answers- Recently closed in November, they just couldn’t compete with the well established Yahoo! Answers.
- Google X – It was designed to look similar to OS X, kinda cool.. .but Google didn’t want to risk a law suit from Apple. The link is a mirror of what Google X actually looked like.
- Google Compute – Yes, this one put your computer to work for other people when you weren’t using it! Using the Google Toolbar, Google Compute used your computer to help with calculations and research projects. Google was going to carefully select “worthwhile endeavors” to help, but Google Compute didn’t last long enough to do this.
- Google Viewer – This one displayed your Google search results as a Slide Show.
So long, farewell Google services….
Wow, those are some strange concepts Google had going before.
Yahoo! kind of has both forms of video:
-News/TV videos (although somewhat hidden and many videos are Plus only)
-YouTube like videos
Here’s the URL the player shows me. This URL probably won’t work for you, however. If you look at news stories it often says “related video” with a javascript link to the video player
< [cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com]>
About YouTube, I always wonder when sites own multiple sites that do basically the same thing.
Ex’s=
Y! Photos and Flickr
Y! Myweb and Y! bookmarks beta and del.icio.us
Google video and YouTube
etc…
It seems to me a waste to maintain two competing sites that do the same function. Why not just evaluate both, determine which is most advanced, and put all the effort on making the advanced one even better. Then give users of the other site an early warning and the ability to sync their content to the chosen site and drop the inferior one.
I’m pretty surprised YouTube remains fully un-modified. No link at the bottom to Google or anything. They haven’t even changed “about us” page to mention Google.
BTW: loved that video a while back of the future of YouTube under Google’s ownership
I think the services are often kept separate because they are targeting different audiences. Yahoo Photos, for example, is more for the casual users while people using Flickr are a little more advanced. Or at least that is what I have read before. If they eliminate the service then they risk losing some of their users to a competitor.
I have to say I agree with ryan on the point of the services, but that can prove to be the downfall of one or both of the services because of their inability to market one product to the 2 crowds, the tech savvy early adopters and the more tech inept general public. It’s fundamental to the success of technology products and services as well as Internet start-ups that you can “Cross The Chasm” (<–great book on the subject) and market your services beyond the tech savvy to the general public…that’s the true sign of successful design and marketing.
I actually remember them discussing this a while back myself…and was extremely excited to hear it, because that service would have been immensely useful to me. As I will often be watching a documentary or news program that I need a transcript of in order to source information for personal research and writing, or for research papers for school. I would often find myself calling and emailing stations like CNBC asking for a copy of their transcript (for free or for a fee), and they would simply reply we can get you a copy of the show on VHS that would arrive at my address several weeks upon ordering it. That simply wouldn’t help me, because it was anything but timely, and was more difficult to transfer the information..seeing as I would have to listen and write/type it all down at the same time it was playing. I really hope Google, or someone else does this in the future, it would make research and sourcing information for me, incredibly easier, as so many websites for tv networks, simply do not maintain transcripts for their show after they air, let alone post those transcripts online for people to read.
I’m actually really surprised that television networks haven’t started making the transcripts available online. They could even charge some sort of “subscription” fee so that users could quickly access them after the shows aired. That really boggles my mind why it hasn’t been done yet.