The End of Google Videos as it Merges with YouTube
In 2005, in order to take advantage of the number of videos being uploaded to the Internet, Google launched a new service that it called Google Video1. This was a search engine devoted to finding video content on the web, and it also allowed registered users to upload their own videos onto the Google hosted site. At about the same time, YouTube was launched and soon became the standard site for Internet video2. The success of YouTube prompted Google to buy it in November 2006 for $1.65 billion3, and since that time it has gradually been integrating YouTube with all of its other online services.
Google has been very focused recently on integrating all of their services via their social network platform, Google+. YouTube has been integrated with Google+ since November 2011, and the already obsolete Google Videos has become even less important since then2. Google has been gradually phasing out Google Videos over the past few years, and even stopped allowing uploads to their hosted site in 2009. The decision to discontinue Google Videos was announced on the Google Official Blog along with several other services that the search engine giant is phasing out, including Google Mini, iGoogle and the Symbian App, which it says are outdated1. It is also dropping the Google Talk Chatback widget to focus on another of its acquisitions, Meebo.
Google has been encouraging users to move their videos to YouTube for the past couple of years and will finally move the remaining catalogue of Google Videos across to YouTube on August 20. Although Google Videos is joining a long list of Google products that have been discontinued recently, it seems to be one that very few users will miss. Unlike the protests over iGoogle being discontinued, the end of Google Videos has been seen as a productive integration by most users. It also allows Google to leverage the most revenue out of one of their most lucrative websites by dropping the mostly duplicated services being offered by Google Videos.
For marketers, the integration of YouTube with Google+ makes having content on both sites more important to the SEO of their corporate webpages. Google has been using data from their social network as a part of the page ranking process for a while now, and linking your YouTube content to your Google+ page will obviously be given priority ranking by Google as it tries to reward people for staying in their part of cyberspace. Google does claim to be sensitive to the impact that these changes have on their users and say that they weigh each decision to drop a product carefully, but by streamlining their service they are moving towards creating beautiful technology that will produce the best user experience possible.
One thing is certain in all of this; Google will continue to trim down to a completely integrated suite of services that will cover the full range of Internet activities via their Google+ pages. With the lion’s share of the search market and a growing slice of the social media pie, Google is developing an online environment that their users don’t have to leave, and thus are a long-term captive audience for their advertising. It may be a few years before they have all of the pieces assembled and all of the bugs worked out, but the businesses that learn to use this new form of integrated Internet first will have the edge on their competitors. Make sure that you take full advantage of this rapidly developing part of the Internet and contact Infintech Designs about making Google’s business services work for you.
References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Videos
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Tube
3. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t/google-buys-youtube-billion/
4. http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/spring-cleaning-in-summer.html
