Post by ashoka1 on Jan 27, 2005 4:32:32 GMT -5
www.mediacenterpcworld.com/news/180
Thanks to THUGLIFE for the pass on:
Video Search: Yahoo! v Google
Google Video
How does the new offering from the world's most
popular search engine compare to the (on the surface)
similar service from Yahoo! that launched a few weeks
previously.
We reported yesterday that Google had launched
Google Video Beta, but the media circus that
accompanied it was in stark contrast to the relative
quiet when Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Video Search.
Both services are in beta at the moment and great
things are expected, but we wanted to take a look at
both and see how they perform right now.
The task that we'll set is a TV-related one, after all, this
is a website dedicated to home entertainment.
Let's choose a show - Battlestar Galactica, currently
running on Sci-Fi in the USA and Sky One in the UK - and
a character from the show - Starbuck. What we want to
know is when will the show next be on in Seattle in the
USA and London in the UK? We want to see some video
from then next episode with Starbuck and we want to
get an idea what the episode is about and how it
relates to Starbuck.
Google
We start with Google and go straight to the Google
Video home page. We type in Battlestar Galatica
and....well it's looking good. We immediately get a
screenshot from the show and brief piece of the script.
Luckily for us it mentions Starbuck and best of all, we
can see that the show is on NBC this week, so Seattle
is sorted. No mention of the UK though, but a quick look
at the help page shows that the programme guide is US
only at the moment, so we're going to be out of luck
there.
Finding Starbuck was too easy, so let's look for Baltar,
another character from the show. Straight to the right
result again - this is pretty impressive and clicking on
the result gives us a breakdown of moments from the
next episode involving Baltar. Google even tells us from
when in the episode the excerpts are taken. So let's
click on the screenshot and enjoy the clip. Ah, that
doesn't work. Google Video doesn't contain any video at
the moment. A disappointment at the end of a very
successful test.
Yahoo!
We start the same way with Yahoo! Searching for
Battlestar Galactica immediately gives us a wealth of
results. However, a close look shows that they all seem
to be trailers from movie sites. There's no suggestion
about scheduling.
What about Starbuck? Complete failure. We get a few
results involving deer and not a lot else. Yahoo! only
seems to be indexing filenames, at least it does with
the particular video that we're looking for. Oh well,
while we're here, let's look at the deer video. Finally we
see some moving pictures, it's just a pity it's not the
pictures we wanted.
Conclusion
We have to remember that both services are tests at
the moment, but Google wins hands down. Although
the Yahoo! search works well at finding disparate video
files around the web, it doesn't seem to be associating
related clips in any way and we certainly couldn't use it
to feed our TV habit. Google still has a long way to go,
but they seem to have set themselves the task of
producing a useful tool and Google tend to get to where
they want to be.
Thanks to THUGLIFE for the pass on:
Video Search: Yahoo! v Google
Google Video
How does the new offering from the world's most
popular search engine compare to the (on the surface)
similar service from Yahoo! that launched a few weeks
previously.
We reported yesterday that Google had launched
Google Video Beta, but the media circus that
accompanied it was in stark contrast to the relative
quiet when Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Video Search.
Both services are in beta at the moment and great
things are expected, but we wanted to take a look at
both and see how they perform right now.
The task that we'll set is a TV-related one, after all, this
is a website dedicated to home entertainment.
Let's choose a show - Battlestar Galactica, currently
running on Sci-Fi in the USA and Sky One in the UK - and
a character from the show - Starbuck. What we want to
know is when will the show next be on in Seattle in the
USA and London in the UK? We want to see some video
from then next episode with Starbuck and we want to
get an idea what the episode is about and how it
relates to Starbuck.
We start with Google and go straight to the Google
Video home page. We type in Battlestar Galatica
and....well it's looking good. We immediately get a
screenshot from the show and brief piece of the script.
Luckily for us it mentions Starbuck and best of all, we
can see that the show is on NBC this week, so Seattle
is sorted. No mention of the UK though, but a quick look
at the help page shows that the programme guide is US
only at the moment, so we're going to be out of luck
there.
Finding Starbuck was too easy, so let's look for Baltar,
another character from the show. Straight to the right
result again - this is pretty impressive and clicking on
the result gives us a breakdown of moments from the
next episode involving Baltar. Google even tells us from
when in the episode the excerpts are taken. So let's
click on the screenshot and enjoy the clip. Ah, that
doesn't work. Google Video doesn't contain any video at
the moment. A disappointment at the end of a very
successful test.
Yahoo!
We start the same way with Yahoo! Searching for
Battlestar Galactica immediately gives us a wealth of
results. However, a close look shows that they all seem
to be trailers from movie sites. There's no suggestion
about scheduling.
What about Starbuck? Complete failure. We get a few
results involving deer and not a lot else. Yahoo! only
seems to be indexing filenames, at least it does with
the particular video that we're looking for. Oh well,
while we're here, let's look at the deer video. Finally we
see some moving pictures, it's just a pity it's not the
pictures we wanted.
Conclusion
We have to remember that both services are tests at
the moment, but Google wins hands down. Although
the Yahoo! search works well at finding disparate video
files around the web, it doesn't seem to be associating
related clips in any way and we certainly couldn't use it
to feed our TV habit. Google still has a long way to go,
but they seem to have set themselves the task of
producing a useful tool and Google tend to get to where
they want to be.