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Now Watch This: YouTube Videos Are Part of the Picture in Google Search

Posted on: Friday, 26 January 2007, 09:00 CST

By Jefferson Graham

LOS ANGELES -- Expect to see even more videos on the Web in coming months.

Thursday, Internet search giant Google added videos from its YouTube unit into the Google search index.

Now, when you do a search for everything from "Michael Richards" to "Jon Stewart" and "funny cats," video clips from YouTube pop to the top of Google's video listings. Users must click Google's "video" tab to see these results. They don't show up in the regular Web results.

Google, which acquired YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, says the change is part of its effort to differentiate YouTube from its similar Google Video service.

Google Video wants to be the definitive search engine for video all over the Internet, not just on Google's sites. YouTube will be the place to share and watch video, says Google Vice President David Eun.

For now, Google Video and YouTube remain separate, both offering vehicles to upload and share videos. Over time, Eun says, users will be encouraged to share videos on YouTube and search video on Google.

"You'll begin to see more of a distinction," he says.

Google's monthly audience is more than two and a half times the size of YouTube, with 108 million visitors in December compared to 38 million for YouTube, according to measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings.

By including YouTube videos in Google's video search, "It will dramatically increase video viewing on the Web," Eun says. "People will start finding lots of videos they never even knew existed."

Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media, says the Google move is significant because "so many more people go to Google every day" than YouTube.

"Most of us search for text and websites now, but eventually, we'll be getting to video, and Google is making sure they become the go-to place for video," he says.

Rivals Yahoo and AOL have separate video search engines as well. But neither link to the Web's most popular source of video clips, YouTube.

YouTube has been hit with complaints and controversy about the ease of finding copyright material. Thursday, for example, a search for "Hillary Clinton" and "Jon Stewart" easily found copyright clips at the top of the search results from NBC's Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Thursday, News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox filed a legal notice demanding that Google reveal the name of a YouTube user who posted entire episodes of Fox's 24 TV series.

In the past, Fox, NBC and Comedy Central have asked that clips from their shows be taken down from YouTube.

Eun says Google honors all such requests, and has encouraged copyright owners to use its self-service tools allowing copyright owners to take down the video themselves.

But Eun says he's been floating a concept to the copyright owners to look at the uploaded clips as an opportunity, not a negative. He says that instead of just yanking the clips, copyright owners could instead profit from their wider exposure by posting ads and making money off their huge viewership on YouTube.

"This is potentially a positive, proactive approach," he says. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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