Champ

Bogged down by the growing TV content? Well here is an alternative — Google Video.

The not-so-newly launched service promises to be end your TV programming woes. It will enable you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.

However, similar services are also being offered by rival MSN and Yahoo! So, how this one different from others?

Well there is not much difference in content offering. The new sites are all about packaging and making searches user-friendly.

Google Video allows surfers to search the text of TV shows. Just type in your search term (for instance, Heather Stephens) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title: Desperate Housewives) and “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. (About Google Video). The service gives you te option of choosing the local timings by putting your local area code.

As usual, anything from Google stable has to be a beta site. As the official stand goes: “Right now we’re just testing this product, so you’ll find programs only from a limited number of channels, which we’ve been indexing since late December 2004. You can expect to see more and more content as we continue to add new channels.” (About Google Video)

Considering the Google News is under “beta” tag for years now, I think Google guys have stretched the beta concept too far.

As of now Google video searches following channels: ABC (KGO) *
KRON *
PBS
C-SPAN
KQED *
NBC (KNTV) *
Fox News
C-SPAN2

* San Francisco Bay Area stations

The impact of internet based distribution of programmes is yet to take a definite shape, but the developments like Google video are going to decide the way we will choose and consume media offerings.

The emergence of technologies like Broadband, IP, digital movie-making have opened a floodgate of content which is available for consumption. Not only it has significantly reduced the production costs, but also made media common man’s tool.

But this has never happened before in history mankind. This is truly an age of media and communication revolution.

With digital technology, even a 10-year-old boy can make a film — that he chooses to make a video while a girl is giving him blow job is a totally different matter .

At times, I really get baffled by the amount of programmes and number of medium which are available in the market. That is where I think search engines come handy. However, there are people who feel Google Video will not sustain for long…well let us wait and watch. (See interesting reactions on Google Video)

But I think there is a definite pattern. When Internet boom happened around 1995-1999, the amount of written content baffled surfers, which eventually germinated search engines like yahoo, google and MSN. I think, there is a definite trend which is triggering a new cyber usage pattern!!

References:

labs.google.com
About Google Video
Various newspaper/magazine websites