January 12, 2006

Google Video

Took my first real look at Google Video last night and I have to admit that I’m very impressed with it and with its potential for video education. When Google Video first launched it just seemed to be a random hodgepodge of videos like this. Funny perhaps but not a lot of learning going on there.

But over the last few months Google quietly amassing a fairly cool stockpile of content. As outlined in this blog post on the Google Blog there’s a lot of interesting stuff up there right now. When it comes to video learning the following are worth a look:

• Aquarius Health Care Media: A leading producer and distributor of healthcare-related videos will pilot with Google Video using a variety of titles covering SIDS, diabetes, and blindness, among other health issues.

• CLEARVUE & SVE: A leading provider of educational K-12 educational video content. They sell DVDs and run a subscription media-on-demand website with video, audio, and images. CLEARVUE & SVE primarily serves large clients such as schools, school districts or entire states. Leveraging Google Video, they have embarked on a new and bold strategy to target individual customers directly. Among the hundreds of videos you will find on Google, topics vary from classic children’s literature to detailed explanations about the workings of the human body.

• Kantola Productions: Captures unique speaking events given by well-known experts at Stanford University. Topics focus on innovative and practical business advice, such as How Leaders Boost Productivity by John H. (Jack) Zenger and Mastery of Speaking as a Leader by Terry Pearce.

• LIME: “Healthy Living with a Twist” offers entertaining and revealing programming focused on a greener, healthier, more balanced lifestyle. Programming features inspiration from leading experts, authors, and pop culture icons and covers topics including the environment and sustainability, personal growth, alternative health, healthy foods, and business ethics.

• Nobel Video Library: A library focused on the achievements of individual Nobel Laureate. The series was developed to introduce students to the work of the laureates as well as to support classroom discussion regarding important issues addressed by Nobel Prize winners in recent decades.

I particularly liked a show from Plum TV called Open Exchange which consisted of a CEO (Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels) interviewing other top CEOs.

While you have to pay for some of the content there is a good chunk of it up there for free right now. I’m not sure if that will last but my guess is that there probably will always be a fairly sizable wealth of free educational content on the site.

The biggest question in my mind is how Google will properly showcase this content. To be honest, had I not stumbled upon the post on the Google Blog I don’t think I would have found this stuff. Because Google is allowing anyone and everyone to upload content, it’s going to be increasingly important to have solid filtering mechanisms in place. If they’re able to pull that off this is going to be a really resource. If not, it could turn into a mess.

One more nice feature to mention is that they give you the ability to add code to your site such that you can play video directly within the site. For example, you can check out the Open Exchange interview with Ace Greenberg (CEO of Bear Stearns) below:

(Thanks to Wynn over at the Stingy Scholar blog for his heads up on this feature as well as the LearnOutLoud mention in his blog post about Google Video.)

One last comment and then I’ll sign off for the night.

What is Google Video’s monthly bandwidth usage?

It must an insane amount. And that’s going to be the interesting thing to watch with Google Video (as well as the other video sharing services that are out there). If you’re charging for something you can pretty much be assured that the revenue will offset the costs, even if you’re only selling something for 99 cents. But if Google allows people to post tons of free video and doesn’t charge them to do so you’d have to imagine that will be pretty costly for them. But I guess they can afford it.

After all they are Google.