John Battelle has the scoop: Google Video will finally get some video today, as user-uploaded free videos will be made available to the general public through an open source Google media player.
Google will only be making available those videos already tagged as free, with pay videos coming when Google unveils its payment service sometime in the future. The Google media player plays video in browser, and is based on the open source VLC media player. The code of the player will be posted to Google Code.
Wow. A clear, concise strategy. with a previously mapped-out revenue model. A major service that the whole internet can benefit from. All in browser, all open source. Actual integration with multiple Google services. Sometimes Google gets it all exactly right. I’ll be waiting eagerly for the media player to be put online, sometime this morning.
(via Boing Boing > Findory)
UPDATE: A Dutch blog is claiming that Google accidentally and briefly put out its blog post about this release, and has a screenshot. Dirson was nice enough to convert it to text:
Google Video. Now with video! Author: A Googler
Posted by Matthew Vosburgh, Google Video Software EngineerA couple of months ago we launched a video uploader so you could add your own videos to Google Video. Well, now we’re ready to start displaying all that stuff. I’ve been amazed by your cool videos. I had never seen a robot dog harassing an iguana before, or a monkey doing karate, and I had no idea you were such good dancers.
The clips play right in the page using the brand new Google Video Viewer: a free browser plugin for Windows made by our engineer Aaron Lee using code from the open-source Videolan project. It works great in both Firefox and IE, and we’ve designed it not to fight with any other video plugins you might have. We’re releasing the Windows version first, with Mac (soon) and Linux (later) versions following, the same way we released the Google Video Uploader.
A feature we’re especially pleased with is the ability to search inside a video. Try looking for “sergey brin” and you’ll see what I mean. So have fun watching, or shooting – and keep sending in your videos!
(via Search Engine Watch, which confirms they know the story too, and are waiting for the embargo to lift)
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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