Google Video Now Turning Into Video Search Engine

When Google spent $1.6 billion to acquire YouTube, it was left with the inevitable question: "What do we do with Google Video?" Google Video had lagged in popularity behind sites like YouTube and Revver, but the community uploading videos to Google Video staunchly opposed any notion of simply shutting the service down. They complained that Google Video's uploading and video-editing tools were much better than those of any other video-hosting service, and that embedding and streaming video from Google Video wasn't as buggy and problematic as it was on YouTube. Still, it didn't make sense for Google to operate two different video-hosting services, especially when it now owned the market leader. So last Thursday Google announced that it had finally decided on what it would do with Google Video: Turn it into part video-hosting and part video-search.


You can still upload videos to Google Video, and you can still edit and tag them, so the service is pulling double duty for the time being. It's clear, however, that Google will eventually make Google Video a video search service. Whether that means that all of the videos wind up making their way to YouTube or they'll vanish entirely remains to be seen.