Today, Google Video was launched. Google Inc. founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, together with Jonathan Rosenberg, the company's Vice President of product development and John Piscitello, Product Manager for Google Video, were not satisfied stopping at web content search. On February 25th 2005, the search engine powerhouse launched a beta version of their first multimedia video and television content search which enables users to glean data and images previously broadcast on satellite and network television.

Users Now Can 'Google' TV Content "TiVo Style"

Google's new feature finds content previously aired on TV by scanning through the closed-caption text provided for by satellite and network television.

Google's TV-content index, which began amassing information last month, currently includes programming from The Walt Disney Co.'s, ABC, News Corp.'s, Fox News, PBS, C-SPAN and San Francisco Bay Area stations including ABC (KGO), KQED, KRON TV and NBC (KNTV). All channels are currently US-based, only.

The Google Video index will operate separately from content available on Google.com's homepage. This new service is available via the Google Labs site at:

Jonathan Rosenberg said:

We think TV is a big part of people's lives.

Ultimately, we would like to have all TV programming indexed.

Search Recent TV Programs Online

Google's mission is to organize the world's information in numerous formats.

As of January 25th, this now includes thousands of programs that play on our TV every day.

Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content -- everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

In the Google.com Labs section, Google Video instructs users to:

Type in your search term (for instance, iPod or the California wine destination Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline).

Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show.

Visit the "About this show" side panel to learn when this show will air next.

Results will show information about each archived show including the channel, date and time.

By providing your zip code, Google Video will let users find out the next time and channel where a program will air locally.

As Google Video is being rolled-out with a limited number of channels, at this time, users will find programs only indexed since late December 2004.

Google Video's content will grow as new channels are added.

C-SPAN Chairman and CEO, Brian Lamb spoke of C-SPAN's new partnership with Google. He said:

Our mission is to give viewers complete access to public affairs programming and we are committed to use new technologies to enhance the value of our services.

This partnership with Google further demonstrates how new technologies will expand our audience and make it easier to conduct online searches of our content for information most relevant to them.

For online publishers who rely on Google & Yahoo News, other Internet resources, traditional newspapers and television for content ideas, Google Video is a welcome source of "material."

For contextual content-commerce publishers like Rugged Elegant Living this is music to our ears.

Currently, in order to offer play-by-play coverage of sporting events, news reports and current events stories, Rugged Elegant Living relies on TiVo in order to capture verbatim quotes recorded on television.

Now, with Google Video, or, TV Transcripts, as we would refer to the service, this rich text will be available in a text format that will save publishers hours and hours of time.

For instance, last night, I was all set to publish my "Celebrating The Life of 'Tonight Show' Pioneer, Johnny Carson" story when I learned that KQED's News Hour with Jim Lehrer was doing a special segment on the late late-night talk show host. Both Dick Cavat and a professor from Syracuse University added valuable insights that were worth adding to my piece. In order to make sure I quoted them accurately, I needed to review the TiVoed segment at least four-to-five times. Had I been able to access this KQED content through Google Video I might have published my story at least an hour earlier.

As a contextual content-commerce publisher who gets paid only when a customer clicks on a product link related to the story they are reading, opportunities abound in this realm, as well.

For instance, the day I published a recap of Oprah's 2004 "Favorite Things" story it took hours to capture the essence of this show as well as the relevant product links. While the product links will still have to be done manually, content from the Oprah Winfrey Show will be accessible in a text format.

While Oprah does not necessarily need a bigger audience, with publishers like Rugged Elegant Living she will get one.

Oprah is in her 19th season. However, this is my first season ever watching her in action. I know; shame on me. Of course, I heard of her book club and have periodically purchased her magazine. But during all those years, I was too busy building another business and raising two young babies who were not yet in school. So even if I had had TiVo, I'd probably never have gotten a glimpse of her daily magic on Daytime TV.

For those still operating in the world of nearly zero television and mostly the Internet to get their news and stories of interest, Google Video will provide an even richer, broader resource of information.

Rugged Elegant Living looks forward to serving as a conduit between the creators of inspirational television content and our growing online audience of people who are hungry for "healthy, adventuresome, soulful" news, stories and commentary about which that they would otherwise not learn.

Meanwhile, we look forward to continuing to support Google's business model.

Thank you Brin, Page, Rosenberg, Piscitello, everyone at Google behind this "new product" and all of the content providers offering access to their archived programs.

We look forward to also seeing what Yahoo!, AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, BlinkxTV, HP's Speechbot, PBS' Video Search and Autonomy's Virage have up their sleeves in this space, as well.

For those willing to pay for Video Search, please also look at ShadowTV, Fednet's Recap, Streamsage's CampaignSearch and Nexidia.

Inspire & Be Inspired.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful and "information at your fingertips" living!

~ Jennifer Carolyn King