Google Video: Trash Mixed With Treasure -nytimes

The New York Times

January 19, 2006
David Pogue
Google Video: Trash Mixed With Treasure
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/technology/circuits/19pogue.html

BY now, everybody knows that anything audio is eventually followed by
something video. Radio first, then TV. Audio tape, then videotape. CD, then
DVD. Music iPod, then video iPod.

And then, of course, there's Apple's iTunes Music Store. The day it began
selling videos, too, was the first time that cowering TV executives ever
climbed down off of their kitchen tables and allowed somebody to use "TV
show" and "Internet" in the same sentence. It was a small, timid test - only
five TV series from one network at first, only in the United States, at low
resolution and with copy protection - but it was a spectacular success. TV
fans bought about eight million videos in the first three months of the
service.

You don't sell that much of anything without attracting the attention of
your rivals. At the Consumer Electronics Show two weeks ago, Yahoo, AOL,
Microsoft and Google all announced new variations on the "download for a fee
TV show" formula.

Only one of those ventures has already opened for business: Google Video
(http://video.google.com).

Google's video store is a far less controlled experiment than Apple's. In
fact, Google doesn't even call it a video store; it prefers "the first open
video marketplace." Its big, Google-esque, democratic idea is that anyone,
from the biggest TV network to the most talent-free camera-phone owner, is
allowed to post videos for all the world to see - and to buy.

If it sounds a bit chaotic, you're right; Google Video's hallmark is its
wild inconsistency. On iTunes, you always know what the price will be: $2 an
episode. Every show is downloadable and transferable to an iPod. And you
know the quality you're going to get: great color and clarity, professional
production values, no ads.

AT Google's video emporium, on the other hand, anything goes. Some videos
are copy-protected, others not. Some can be downloaded, others viewed only
online. The resolution and production quality vary widely. Some have ads.
Some offer a three-minute preview, others only 10 seconds. Some videos are
free, some cost money. (The price can be anything; although the
sell-your-own-video feature won't go live for a couple of weeks. Google
keeps 30 percent.) This sort of anarchy isn't necessarily a bad thing. For
example, it's empowering to think that you can post home movies of your baby
or sophomoric "Star Wars" spoofs right alongside episodes of CBS shows and
basketball reruns from the N.B.A.

But it's not necessarily a good thing, either. With inconsistency comes
disappointment and frustration. Why is it that you can download a Charlie
Rose talk show to have and to hold forever, but a "CSI" episode
self-destructs after 24 hours?

The offerings break down into three basic categories. First, there's the
commercial-TV stuff. CBS offers a strange assortment of 12 past and present
series, including "Survivor: Guatemala" (15 episodes), "Star Trek: Voyager"
(5), "MacGyver" (3) and "I Love Lucy" (15). The N.B.A. makes all its games
available online 24 hours after they are played, for $4 each. Sony BMG
offers 52 music videos for $2 each. (At the moment, an American credit card
is required to buy videos.)

The second category is what you might call pseudo-commercial: third-tier,
no-name, late-night, channel 900 stuff. You can buy movies like "Somewhere
in Indiana"; how-to videos like "Rocki's Prenatal Yoga: Labor Preparation
2"; 38-minute movies, like "Adrenaline Rush," that were originally shown in
Imax theaters; and concert videos like "Bacon Brothers: Live" (all $15
each).

Frankly, you'd have to be pretty desperate to shell out $15 to watch filler
like this play in a window no bigger than a stretched-out Post-it Note (480
by 360 pixels), but there you are.

The final category is the amateur user-submitted material. A huge majority
of it is unwatchable trash: home movies, homemade animations and that old
Internet standby, the "making fun of incompetent dancers" video.

Yet among this tidal wave of junk, you'll also find some amazing, free,
jaw-dropping caught-on-tape moments, those funny Web videos that are passed
around by e-mail and eventually attain mythic status; Google Video keeps
them in a category called Popular.

It's the same stuff you'll find on sites like youtube.com and
stupidvideos.com: hilarious TV commercials that are too racy to show in the
United States, clips that would fit right in with "America's Funniest Home
Videos," and favorite snippets from network shows.

There is, in all of this, the seed of a great idea: a bustling marketplace,
a chance for ordinary people with great ideas, luck or timing to make a
little money from their video, while Google handles all the technical server
gruntwork. Indeed, submitting a movie is very easy: you download a little
uploading program (for Mac or Windows), choose the videos to send (there's
no limit on length or size), and specify a price and whether or not you want
your video to be copy-protected. Then, providing there's no nudity or sex,
Google's human and software-based screeners will look over your video and,
eventually, post it.

According to Google, the current Google Video is a beta test, a dry run
intended to solicit feedback and suggestions for improvement. That's
fortunate, because at the moment, the site is appallingly half-baked.
Quarter-baked, in fact.

You want suggestions, Google? Here are a few to get you started.

GIVE US A GOOGLE-WORTHY DESIGN Everyone loves Google's clean, uncluttered
design philosophy. But this site has no design at all.

At the top of the home page, Google offers its sole browsing tool: a pop-up
menu called Video Store. But it lists only stuff for sale ("Basketball
Games," "MacGyver," and so on). Everything else, all the free stuff, is
utterly uncategorized. There's no way to browse it except by paging through
thousands of pages one at a time, 15 thumbnails per page. (There's a Search
box, too, but it's no help unless you already know what you're looking for.
And there's a list view, but it's available only for the commercial TV
stuff, and not the free and amateur stuff.)

Why is the pop-up menu only on the home screen? Once you've moved to a
different page, it's no longer available unless you Back-button your way all
the way to the home page.

BUILD UP THE CATALOG Google offers only 10 episodes of "Deep Space Nine," 5
of "The Twilight Zone," and a single episode of "CSI." At least iTunes, when
it opened for business, offered all seasons' worth of its TV titles. MAC
VERSION, PLEASE Google Video's TV shows, movies and other copy-protected
offerings play back only in a special Google video player - which requires
Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

FILL IN THE WHITE SPACE The infant Google Video is incredibly bare-bones and
empty-looking. How about some ratings, categories, parental controls,
recommendations or customer comments, a description of the resolution or
quality, date of first broadcast or a sense of community?

FIX THE BUGS The Web site itself is quirky and inconsistent. It doesn't
inspire much trust, for example, to see the thumbnails of only three
"MacGyver" episodes - with a legend above it saying "1-5 of about 5."

Google is surely aware of these limitations and has plans to address them.
One aspect of Google Video, however, will not be so easily changed: its
copy-protection scheme, a new one that Google wrote itself. You can't burn
the shows to a CD or DVD, and can't play them back on portable players like
iPods. In fact, most of the TV shows don't play back at all without an
active Internet connection, which, for most people, also rules out laptop
playback on planes, trains and automobiles. This is sickening news for
anyone who thought that two incompatible copy-protection schemes - Apple's
and Microsoft's - were complex and sticky enough already. And compared with
the ABC and NBC shows available on the iTunes store, the value of the CBS
shows looks even worse.

Even if you give Google every benefit of every doubt, this video store
doesn't live up to Google's usual standards of excellence. This, after all,
is the company whose unofficial motto is "Don't be evil." In the case of
Google Video, the company's fans might have settled for "Don't be mediocre."

E-mail: [email protected]





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