The video-uploading service hasn’t been officially announced yet, but Page said Google wants to offer video hosting so the company can study how best to incorporate video data into its diverse search engine, eventually, he hopes, giving users a way to effectively search everything from snippets of last night’s news to outtakes at grandpa’s birthday party.
“It’s an experiment we want to run,” said Page of the video service, which currently hosts a number of non-adult short films on its beta search site, and currently stipulates in its FAQ section that no pornographic content is allowed.
Page’s remarks came during a panel discussion at the National Cable & Telecommunications Show going on this week in San Francisco, which included discussion with John Chambers of Cisco, Brian Roberts of Comcast, Jon Miller of AOL and Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks.
The men were discussing how video-enabled material would change the face of communications when Page made the announcement about Google Video.
When Page admitted he wasn’t sure what kind of content would be submitted to Google Video, Katzenberg said he had a pretty good idea.
“I can tell you what you’re going to get,” he said, laughing.
But Page appeared unconcerned with the implication of adult videos being part of the service.
“There’s lots of technology you can use to deal with those issues. There might be an adult section, or something like that. I don’t think that is going to be a big issue,” he said.
Last month Google Video announced it had integrated a video player into its search engine that allows users on all different operating systems to play videos directly through Google, avoiding the need for external video software like Windows Media Player or Apple’s Quicktime Player.
Users who conduct a video search on Google Video can play back results in a video window that appears within the browser. The new service uses technology from Macromedia’s Flash 7 software utility, playing fluidly in a large screen with considerably less bandwidth requirements than traditional video playback.
How Google will distribute and protect content in its video service is still unclear. Page said the company is currently working with content owners and service providers to make sure video data is shared and protected legally, but did not elaborate.
The official Google Video announcement is expected to come in the next few days.