We Sat Around Waiting For Google Video And All We Got Was This?
from the needs-a-bit-of-work-it-appears dept. — Remember the good old days when Google used to "wow" people with their new products? AdSense. Gmail. Google Maps. These were products that took what was apparently …
Context & Ripple Effects
After teasing the Video Store on January 9 as 'coming soon' at video.google.com, Google flipped the switch a day later: the long-delayed Video Marketplace is live, pairing free user-submitted clips with paid rentals and downloads licensed from major providers like CBS and the NBA — the first real attempt to make money off amateur video rather than just index it.
The reception is notably cooler than the AdSense/Gmail/Maps era that Techdirt's headline mourns, though the story traveled fast, picked up the same day by The Unofficial Google Weblog and Davenetics. It lands in a busy week for Google beyond search: Google Earth shipping for the Mac, and a quiet classified-style print ad test running in the Chicago Sun-Times — while at least one analyst floats an explicitly non-predictive bear case in which the stock could fall to $100 a share, a sign of how much growth expectations are riding on new products landing well.
First-order effects
- CBS, the NBA, and other licensed providers immediately get a direct-to-consumer download channel through Google's storefront, while amateur uploaders see the promise of monetized video finally operationalized.
- Techdirt and the bloggers picking up the story frame the launch as a credibility test: the first Google product widely judged underwhelming against the company's own hit-making standard.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in paid video downloads and video search now face a Google storefront backed by major-league content, forcing them to differentiate on pricing, selection, or playback terms rather than assuming Google would stay out of transactions.
- The simultaneous experiments — Mac-native Google Earth and Sun-Times print classifieds — signal that Google is probing revenue lines beyond web ads at exactly the moment its newest consumer launch disappoints, raising the stakes on each bet.
Third-order effects
- If the gap between launch hype and delivered product keeps widening, Google's valuation narrative shifts from 'every release is a wow' to 'search ads fund everything else,' making the health of that ad business the load-bearing wall for the whole expansion strategy.
- The broader structure taking shape is a commercial internet where search companies become retailers of media — owning storefronts, rights deals, and payment rails — not just pointers to other people's content.
The trend: Online video is moving from a free search-and-view index to a paid download marketplace, with Google's ability to keep its string of breakout product launches intact now openly in question.