Sesam.se launched in November of 2006, and “is now Sweden’s leading search engine.” That’s pretty impressive, and thanks to a partnership with Blinkx, Sesam.se is set to take another leap: it will gain access to 12 million hours of video.
Yet upon learning of this deal, one’s first thought might amount to “uh-oh” – the Swedes speak Swedish, and Blinkx tends to deal in English. Luckily, Wikipedia informs us that “[a] majority of Swedes, especially those born after World War II, understand and speak English thanks to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong Anglo-American influence and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films.”
A look at the Sesam.se home page confirms this linguistic overlap – and a number of shared interests – as visible keywords include “Wimbledon,” “Harry Potter,” and “Transformers.”
(Also, an episode of “Globe Trekker” documented a Sweden fluent in English, but I know that not everyone watches PBS.)
With that potential problem out of the way, then, this partnership looks like a good deal for both Blinkx and Sesame.se. “blinkx will power video search for the Sesam.se website, combining results from blinkx’s index of the Web with Swedish video content,” a press release announced. “blinkx will generate revenue based on video searches that are conducted.”
Jörgen Eng, Sesam.se’s Head of Product Development, also stated, “By teaming up with blinkx, we now offer our users the best video search capabilities available on the Web today.”
