Commentary: Google Admits Mistake With Videos

Filed Under (Waste Basket) by Mysk on 26-01-2006

I’ve posted my thoughts about Google Video in other venues. The gist of my opinion is that it’s great for the end user to share their content and link to their videos from their blogs or from game guild websites, but as a commercial venue it’s terrible. I wouldn’t trust the service with my credit card number despite the Google name, it’s simply that unprofessional.

Aside from its apperance, it’s very difficult to find what you’re after. There were (and still are) no real categories. So the system relied entirely on searches, and their search results aren’t terribly accurate. Worse, the free video service and the paid video service are not separated, and this clutters the search results with that much more unrelated content.

So what has changed? Not a whole lot, but they’re going in the right direction.

The first thing that one notices is that the Google Video home page now presents several videos for sale. There are 24 listed on the home page at the time of this writing. Unfortunately, this is not too useful to someone who is actually looking for a video to buy, but at least it show cases more of what they have.

The change that is useful are the links above these 24 listed videos. You can now browse movies, music videos, TV shows, shows from CBS and then essentially “everything else” that’s for sale. In clicking through these links I found that TV shows now have links to all of their other episodes. So, if you’re looking for an episode in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 or a specific episode of CSI it is now much easier to find.

Now, here’s what I see as the problem: They’re still basically relying on their search engine to produce ‘results’. They’ve began to categorize some things, but not everything. Their mistake in the beginning was not only a horrible interface, but this reliance on searches.

They need to almost entirely stop relying on their search system. Customers don’t care to waste their time wading through search results, as we all know, and this is part of The Big Problem. They need an interface that’s expected from an online store or (I suspect) most people will continue to go elsewhere.

As such, more categorization is needed. Customers need to be able to browse for comedy, drama, horror, sci-fi, and so on. No more cluttering things together. Examples from those categories need to be presented on the “front page” for that category.

In the same spirit of “no more clutter”, the store and the free stuff need to be completely seperated. This includes search results!

Google has the money for it, they need to hire a real designer. In all honesty, kids often design better, more professional looking web sites.

Then we have The Big Problem, as I see it, and that’s the fact that Google didn’t see these issues to begin with. It’s almost unanimously agreed that they have a terrible design and that their video sevice as a commercial system is a flop. Yet Google themselves seem to be blind to the otherwise obvious problems of their system.

Now, after being bashed by several big news sources (and just about everyone else), they’ve taken only the most rudimentary steps toward addressing the problems.

Ironically, Google is relying far too much on their search results. Building a commercial system around those results instead of a user friendly, browser (as in people that like to browse) friendly system just does not work and they’re totally blind tot his. They’re trying to push a square peg into a round hole; they simply don’t go together, but they just keep on pushing anyway.

I’m of the opinion that Google needs to hire outside help or their system is going to be a commercial failure. They’ll have sells, yes, but not enough to make their partners happy. In the end I see CBS (and the others) being unhappy with Google and quite possibly looking for an exit that allows them to high tail it to iTunes.

Here’s a quick thought to close on: Google Video could start an affiliate system and give folks a small kick back for bringing them customers. This would encourage others to find good content for Google, or even to go so far as to build websites that have a good interface that folks could use to browse the content.

It’s kind of sad that they would need a system like this, but at the moment they do…

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~Mysk

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