The video search engine Truveo didn’t spend very much time as a stand-alone company, as AOL came calling with a briefcase full of money and left with the business in hand.
Truveo began in January 2004 and launched in September 2005, calling itself the best video search engine online. Apparently, AOL agreed, and announced in a statement they had purchased Truveo. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The deal went through in December 2005, as AOL acted very quickly to get Truveo’s video crawlers and technology out of the marketplace, lest some other company swoop in and make the purchase themselves.
Truveo discussed why it is different than other video search options on its web site:
Finding all the video files on the web is only part of the challenge. For video to be searchable, it is also necessary to collect meaningful text metadata to associate with each video file.
Whenever our visual crawlers find a new video on the web, they can also “visually” examine the context of the surrounding web application. In most cases, this examination reveals a bounty of rich and detailed metadata related to every video.
With our unique approach to crawling, not only can we find the videos that the other crawlers miss, but we can also collect rich and relevant metadata for each video. As a result, when you search for video with Truveo, you can always find high-quality, relevant search results.
AOL called Truveo “the clear leader in the video search space, augmenting AOL’s very strong leadership position in online video” and touted its 12-person engineering staff as “world class.”
The purchase follows their 2003 deal for media search engine SingingFish and the launch of AOL Video Search in June 2005. Both of those events will likely see significant changes in store as AOL integrates Truveo’s technology.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
