Hotdog: It's Google Video
New from the labs at Google is...roll the trumpets...Google Video. Once again on a new frontier of online searching, Google Video lets you search recent TV shows (as if you don't get enough of them on your TV itself). Does this count as "information?" -- maybe so, but I think it is more noise on the line than information.
Google's mission is to make available all the world's information, and I guess they must think intermittent and sloppy transcripts of bad TV is information.
Right now, Google Video is pretty limited: it just shows a few stills for the shows it has catalogued, along with a text transcript. Channels covered are very limited, but obviously this thing will expand, and I suppose ultimately it will get connected with your TIVO-style video recorders. You don't need to be a weatherman or hotdog vendor to see where this thing is going.
The park rangers used to say in Yellowstone in a vain attempt to keep the tourists from feeding the wildlife, "It takes a smart bear to know where the hotdog ends and the hand begins." In a similar spirit, it takes a tough and neurotic Web surfer to know where the static ends and the information begins. I'm not sure which camp Google Video falls in, but it sure is hotdog cool of Google to do all this stuff for us!
Posted by Harold Davis at January 25, 2005 03:54 PM
