On Wednesday, Yahoo! Inc announced that it would make its video search fully operational. The Sunnyvale-based company's site was running a 'beta' or test version since it was launched in December 2004. From Wednesday evening, it has become a full fledged video search site. Viewers can now search for news clips, music videos and movie trailers from sources such as CBSNews.com, MTV.com and IFILM.com.
Google, and Blinkx.tv already have sites that are dedicated to video search. Yahoo’s foray into this area is seen as a direct challenge to Google’s monopoly. Google commands a lion's share grabbing 47 percent of the online searches in the United States, while Yahoo lies second with 21 percent of the market share.
Commenting on Yahoo's latest offering, Theresa Wise, of Accenture, the consultants, says, "Yahoo's new video service is just the beginning - the tip of the iceberg. We are seeing, through the Internet and through satellite TV services a definite shift in the way that people watch television. People in the industry are realizing that companies such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft occupy gatekeeper positions which are going to become massively important."
Yahoo video search can also be accessed as RSS feed, a feature that allows the user to customize what he/she wants to view. Asked on how the video search sites could be turned into revenue making ventures, Mrs. Wise says, "TV companies could choose to run ads on their electronic programme guides, the pages which list schedules. But more often they choose to cross-promote movies, which can be worth more, Companies like Yahoo and Google could move in the same direction."
As of now Yahoo is offering ‘free’ service on its video search site http://video.search.yahoo.com. Google asks content providers to set a price for their products and then takes a percentage of the same.
Yahoo’s partners in this venture are companies like TVEyes, Internet Broadcasting Systems, The One Network, and Stupid Videos. Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's director of media and desktop search, is emphatic that Yahoo wants to be the number one site on the net, "We want to be the place to go whenever people are trying to find online video," he stressed. He added that the online video segment was expanding rapidly due to the surge in the number of homes with high-speed Internet connections.
