Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Google turns on TV search

January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Google turns on TV search

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Google's announcement of a service that allows users to search the content of television programs from the likes of PBS, the NBA, Fox News, and C-SPAN, will open up a new world of easy access to research and will ramp up search competition with Yahoo and others.

Yahoo, meanwhile, said it is making its video search available this week by linking to the service from the home page of its Web site.

The Google Video beta (http://www.google.com/video) lets users search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004, the company said.

"What Google did for the Web, Google Video aims to do for television," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products, in a statement. "This preview release demonstrates how searching television can work today. Users can search the content of TV programs for anything, see relevant thumbnails, and discover where and when to watch matching television programs. We are working with content owners to improve this service by providing additional enhancements such as playback."

The new video search initiatives from Google and Yahoo allow access to yet another level of content in the intense competition over search technology, said Rob Enderle, of the Enderle Group. "This is certainly important for users who want to research news events and shows. It's another easy to get us to the data we need," Enderle said.

For users of Google Video, entering a query will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken, the company said. Google Video also offers a preview page of still video images and five short text segments; upcoming episodes; search within shows; and program details.

The Google Video beta enables users to search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004. Entering a query will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken.

Google published endorsements of the program from prominent executives Tuesday.

"For more than three decades PBS and local PBS stations have pioneered the use of state-of-the-art technology to use media to inform, engage, entertain, and educate the American public," said Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of PBS. "Today we are proud to join with Google, a company that continues to achieve new levels of technical innovation with the launch of Google Video, a new service that increases the reach and impact of PBS content."

"NBA fans are tech savvy early adopters," said NBA Commissioner David Stern. "With our partnership with Google on the pioneering Google Video service, we enhance our ability to meet the needs of NBA fans, delivering to them content and information in a new and innovative way."


For its part, Yahoo's video search product will be able to search closed captioned content from Bloomberg, BBC and BSkyB as the result of a relationship with TVEyes, a company spokeswoman said.

Yahoo will leverage its established content partner relationships through "Ya-hoo! Movies," "Yahoo! Launch" and "Yahoo! News" to include movie trailers, music videos, and news.

Yahoo includes content made available through Media Real Simple Syndication (mRSS), which enables smaller video content publishers to upload their content directly to Yahoo! Video Search.

The online community has access to Yahoo Video Search and mRSS format that the company introduced in December 2004 and which allows users access to online video content. Yahoo also has direct feed relationships with Real, Atom Film, IFilm and Stupid Videos, the spokeswoman said.

Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 25, 2005 02:02 PM

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