Google Goes Beta (for real)

Google Video has disappointed me. It was off to a bad start a few months ago with many criticizing its appearance. It's ironic that many couldn't find what they were looking for, so that the interface had to be changed to feature the premium content from television.

But I'm not in the market for videos. So, what I'm interested in is more the procrastination content - hence the "popular" videos. Here comes the disappointment. The page rarely changes. If you click the link "Another 15 popular videos" 3-4 times, you'll quickly have seen them all. If you come back a few weeks later, don't expect too many changes. If ever you've been on Google Video, chances are that you've seen this Octopus Vs. Shark video. Not bad, but if you got terabytes of content, I guess you could move on faster than that. It must be that too many people rely on this "popular" function - like I do - so the solution is to push more content to the users. That's probably why they added new functions such as "more videos from this user". Practice makes perfect.

Also, the service must be used largely by male college students eager to impress their friends with a good laugh. See the selection of Superbowl ads that quickly showed up in the popular section. That being said, there are also hilarious examples like Brokeback to the Future or Top Gun Brokeback Squadron.

And of course, there are gems that you have to uncover yourself. As a Mac user for more than a decade by now, I was very pleased with this historic video taken at the 1984 shareholders meeting of Apple. Steve Jobs with a bow tie? It's only matched by Bill Gates on stage (not in this video). It's interesting to see the 5 ads, who forever stayed in the shadow of the infinitely famous 1984 ad. I must say that it's not intellectually very honest to say that all you need to learn to use a Mac is how to click a button. All you need to learn to program in C++ is typing on a keyboard?

Overall, Google Video has a steeper learning curve than the other services - probably because they come in a market were Apple has set the standard, rather than Microsoft (Hotmail vs. Gmail). So, for once, this is a Google service that's really a beta.