Two months ago, we reported that some people had seen video clips appear on Google News. Not us, mind you – a sort of regional test may have been taking place – but some people. Now we’ve seen one for ourselves, and the clip came straight from YouTube.
Greg Jarboe seems to have been the first person to notice the reappearance of videos, and if you’re for some reason unable to reproduce the effect on Google News, he has screenshots. All you need to look for, though, is a small plus sign followed by the word “video.” Click on the plus sign, and the video will expand into existence beneath it and start playing.
During my visit, the only story with this feature related to Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan. Jarboe discovered something about Kurdish rebels. So even if the YouTube video feature isn’t fully implemented, it looks like there is some sort of more-than-minimal testing going on.
This make sense; back when videos first appeared, the News Engineering Team’s Lucy Zhang said, “For our initial launch, we have included several top news sources such as CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations,” and “[o]ver the next few months, we’ll continue to add new sources as fast as we can.” What better than one of Google’s own properties?
Google News and YouTube should both benefit as a result of this development.
