After the mostly Google-less holiday season, the rumor mill is churning warp speed in the New Year. The Google PC is suddenly on the braniac minds of journalists and alpha-geek bloggers, as is Google Box or Cube or something, and suddenly-the idea seems perfectly likely and doable-a pay-per-view video service complete with its own payment system and hardware that could really benefit the indie film maker.
Fits Google’s lift-up-little-guy-open-source MO. Fits all the buzz, all the weird domains, all the changes to terms and conditions, all the new robot.txt files altered video player downloadsAND, dear fellow conspiracy theorist, it fits right in with the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show where Google executives will be speaking and presenting some kind of Google gadgetry.
Hmmm.
Garett Rogers, you started this.
Rogers, who doesn’t mind sifting through mind-numbingly tedious information noticed on December 23rd, while visions of sugar plums danced in the rest of the world’s head, that Google had modified the terms and conditions to its video upload program. Suddenly there arose with a clatter the words “facilitate the sale or rental of,” “third party commercial retailer,” and “designate a purchase and/or rental price.”
That’s weird. But how would users pay for the service? Garett is quick to point out that he’s been shouting “Google Purchase is coming!” for months. Others have called it Google Wallet.
A quick search on Google takes you to a Forbes article published on December 13th.
“The director of Google Video stated last week that Google will introduce in the near-term a service where users can pay to download video content. Some content on Google Video will be ad-supported while others will be paid or download to own’ clips.”
And there seem to be a bunch of Google+Video&type=f&start=0″ class=”bluelink”>job openings at Google Video, too.
Okay, so inevitable it is. Yesterday, a text overlay on some Google Videos popped up reading “Buy this video to view the full 9 seconds.” Garett, you tireless geek, thanks for the screenshot. I wonder how much 9 seconds costs?
On Friday, Larry Page is expected to deliver the keynote address at the Google-strike that-Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and is to unveil something, perhaps the Google Box. And wouldn’t the timing be perfect if it were some type of apparatus with USB connectivity that allowed you to make those videos portable and transferable?
But then again, we’ve been let down at these meetings before, via video.
