One could easily make the case that Google was in the entertainment business. Or at least in the business of helping people find entertaining content.
But with GoogleTV and some recent business moves, you could argue that now Google is getting serious.
The acquisition of YouTube gave Google the largest repository of user-generated video content; and keeping it open as a free service has encouraged continuing exponential expansion.
Not to be satisfied with fuzzy home videos, Google’s actively making deals for “premium” video content from more traditional entertainment media outlets. Last week, Google India announced that its put hundreds of Indian movies onto YouTube, Then came word that Google was planning to create original video channels on YouTube.
More recent actions include the acquisition of fflick, a service starting to integrate social media by seeing what friends are saying about movies. Other recent acquisitions include a firm specializing on marketing business videos online, and a video production house. All told, Google has invested a reported $100 million in “premium” shows and materials to serve as a draw for a YouTube app on Google TV and elsewhere. (A reported 7000 hours of full-length movies and shows so far).
With YouTube, Google already has arguably the world’s largest repository of video. The new emphasis on original, high-quality productions, Google TV seems to be trying to position itself more as a content destination than a search engine. While Google’s excelled at text searches, its ability to sort, categorize, and develop individually-focused recommendations for video content has been less successful. Its current video search relies largely on textual descriptions and filenames of clips, as much of the Web’s video content doesn’t have particularly useful metatags associated with it. This has made using GoogleTV search apps difficult, as they provide limited results per display, making finding something you want to watch more of an effort.
For now, Amazon’s new online video system seems to be providing a better viewing experience – using their knowledge about user’s interests (and previous movie and video purchases) to make better recommendations. And it probably helps that with their more limited selection of content, they’ve been able to do a better job of meta-tagging their offerings. We'll have to see if Google can come up with a better approach to searching for, and making good recommendations for users online video entertainment.
Sources:
“Google’s fflick Aimed at Making YouTube More Social,” WebProNews
"Google TV: Extended Test Drive Report," VidBlog
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