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Thursday, January 25, 2007

Google Video With YouTube Content

Google acquired YouTube last year, and now they’ve started to integrate YouTube results within Google Video. If you search Google Video for cars, for example, the first result will take you to YouTube, and the second will play a video from Google Video. This also means that YouTube is now quasi-integrated onto the Google homepage (because Google.com has a “Video” link since August 2006), which may give it another substantial boost. A YouTube press release however states that...

[YouTube] will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately. Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, where/when YouTube launches internationally, to international resources.

This Google Video/ YouTube thing remains rather unique, and uniquely weird, among Google’s services, as it’s really one product – a video platform – split in two. Google seems to make a bet that instead of merging two communities (which risks destroying either one), there’s a benefit in appealing to two different communities with different tastes. This strategy creates potential risks in itself: users have to relearn interfaces when they’re browsing the Google OS, Google developers have to partly double their efforts as they’re maintaining two video sites, and Google may continue the “community drift” far into the future, weakening their two video services in competition against other video portals.

Join the ongoing forum comments.

[Thanks Zach C. and TomHTML!]

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