“I know Apple, and you’re no Apple… “This is a truly historical meeting of the established and new media,” said Les Moonves, the head of CBS, about his network’s new video partnership with Google. Um, no, Les. So far, it’s just a really crap web site,” Ashlee Vance writes in her review for The Register. “If, like us, you expected the new and improved Google Video service to rival something like Apple’s iTunes store, then do yourself a favor and don’t visit the Google shop for a few months. Google has done nothing to celebrate its unique access to shows such as CSI, Survivor and Star Trek. Instead, the company has buried CBS’s shows beneath a dismal interface wrapped in a shambles of a delivery mechanism.”
Vance asks, “Think we’re being too harsh? Have a look for yourself.”
Vance writes, “Google Video will no doubt improve over time. Coming out with such a poor initial service though is a huge mistake. Google would have done better to refine its product and release something that comes close to being Apple’s red-headed stepchild. We’re not even sure what life form Google Video is. It’s certainly not human.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Peter G” for the heads up. See something that should be on MacDailyNews? Click contact and send us the link.]
Vance’s review is spot on. This thing from Google basically sucks worse than a 1.0 version of something from Microsoft. It’s that bad. Yuck.
CBS, hello? Mr. Moonves? Pick up the phone. Dial Steve Jobs’ number. Run over to Cupertino and sign on the dotted line. Stop screwing around. You’re supposed to be the “Tiffany Network,” your products should be available via Apple’s “Tiffany Media Portal.”
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Apple is going to make all others look like children. Design (not just looks..but compete integrated systems) has won the day. Not many people understand the power of good design…or even how to begin to do it.
how’re you supposed to browse in that mess? There’s no logik to it. It is a Beta though.
Just another data point showing that CBS is the most poorly run network in the U.S. When will Moonves get the boot ?… the guy has no vision and no backbone.
It’s ugly and there are no prices on anything and why are all the videos all spread out all over the place. Then I clicked on the Lucy show only to be greeted with a message that says only Windows 2000 and XP users can purchase this video. Try doing that to your customers in a real video store and see how many come back. I’ll tell you how many, ZERO!
That’s like saying only green people are allowed to purchase our videos.
THAT WEBSITE IS SO SAD!
And you can’t even see a preview of the video if you are not from the US.
Did anyone else notice the following in the referenced article?
Incidentally, if you do an episode search for “God,” the last entry is an interview with WSJ hack Walt Mossberg. So, it’s pretty clear that the Google Video search has been infected by the same blog noise as the regular Google search engine.
Walt Mossberg a hack? Hmmmm.
I wish I could get NBA games from iTunes store. Preemptive rebuttal for the anti-NBA response – I’m just using my fav sport. Consider if games from your favorite sport were available. It would be cool to save the great games.
oh, and the google interface is crap, too
their primary colors on butcher paper approach doesn’t translate to this application very well…
I don’t agree. Google’s flare is simplicity. The prices are clear for pay videos, the others are free. For navigation, use the drop down menu or search. The videos download fast and are Mac accessible through the browser.
I think everyone is being a little hard on Google Video. I’d rather look at a white background than a bunch of advertisements.
Did anyone look at the Charlie Rose episodes she mentions? Each one just has an image of Rose in a different suit.
Content brought to you by the man (Les) once known as Pasquale
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Oh. My. God.
I’m stationed in Germany, but because I have a US credit card I can buy from Apple’s store. I tried browsing the Google store and was told that it was not available for my country. Uh Google, just because I have a German IP address does not necessarily make me German.
Magic Word: because – as in because I’m an American.
Google is not known for hiring web designers.
Total geek city at that company.
that site sucks and blows.
gimme iTMS
So, tell me, am I missing something? I drink the kool-aid regurlary and I’ve got my “mac geek on” in a big way, BUT I’ve never been able to preview video on the ITMS. There are shows that I’m not familar with on the store and would like to at least see a 30sec video clip, but all I get is a short audio clip that’s not even representative of what’s being sold. At least the Google site wins my vote for that and I had a hard time giving it a “complete” thumbs down.
So am I missing something? Does the ITMS have this “view videos before you buy” feature? We can preview music clips, why not video? Seems so obvious. I MUST be doing something wrong.
Viacom and its companies are very, very arrogant. They will go around the world twice and back again just to avoid Cupertino.
And 3rd Kidney, you can view video previews just by doubleclicking on the the item you want to see. Make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime on your machine.
For a company with such a high value stock this is embarrasing. It looks like someone just vomite all over the screen. Absolutely no presentation…
It has to be a spoof, surely?
If not Google has truly just shown itself to be mortal..
A blast from the past!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4436710013736446644
Google Video was a very nice Christmas gift to Apple.
It confuses the nonPod market while at the same time promotes the market that Apple dominates.
Paid conent is mixed with user uploaded content which is a HUGE mistake and dilutes the brand of the paid content. Seeing CSI with some cheap user uploaded video makes me think very badly of CSI. This store is a mistake. Once iTunes gets sports, then this store will be histroy.
countdown to 1000 downloads!!
“And 3rd Kidney, you can view video previews just by doubleclicking on the the item you want to see. Make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime on your machine.”
Thanks JadisOne, after reading your instruction and clicking around for a bit, I discovered the “hide video viewer” button at the bottom left of my ITMS window. Yep, I had my view window hidden!
Ahhhh, now I’m a happy man and can get to buying some video content. Oh, btw, NOW I can dog the Google site in good conscience!
Thanks again for your help.
“I’m gonna kill F’n Google”
haaaa… by the looks of it, Google is gonna F’n kill Google, lol.
-L
Google’s interface works for the search engine. Doesn’t seem to work well here. Certainly isn’t exciting. Just proves to me once again that Google is just this decade’s Netscape ($470.63 – get real!) The comment regarding blog noise is dead on. I’m still waiting for Google to do something, anything, to live up to the hype surrounding them as the annointed Microsoft killer.
The aforementioned blog noise is just a symptom like the creaking of a hull. Delivering a “good enough” video service to the masses (IMHO) won’t be good enough anymore to guarantee a critical mass of users and certainly not good enough to lessen the pressure on Google. Apple has set the bar quite high and has reached too many people to be considered just a niche player anymore. Expectations for other services are now higher than the Windows/PC market ever dreamed possible and it will probably be quite some time before they are able to deliver the same quality. This may be just a beta release but even as such it is pretty awful when compared to even other PC-centric music/video services. They better get better in a hurry.
It’s not that bad. Not that good but not that bad. Like their their advertising, it works but it isn’t all that great.
Wow. That looked worse than the crap I took the other day.
MDN word == “down” as in CBS should take their stuff down from Google and put it on ITMS.
This is a classic rope a dope by Apple. Everyone was predicting some type of Video delivery system and a MacMini DVR from Apple at MacWorld. So, Google, tried to initially capture the market by slapping this crap together. Did anyone catch the demo by Google CEO Larry Page? This guy is pure geek and it was abysmal, unless you yourself was a geek type. Really, it was so unimpressive.
Consumers will be able to compare Apple’s version of how a video store and home media system should work when they introduce it sometime this year. I see Google’s stock price tanking this year. David (Apple) slays Goliath (Google). hahahaha.
Wow, bikini calculus…. great combo.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1873635453969513506
Yikes!! I could have put this together my first year of building Web Sites back in 1997, wait I think I actually did
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Crappy way to buy videos.
It’s like digging through the under $9.99 bin at wally world.
But here is my biggest problem with it:”Sorry, purchasing this video requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP.”
So much for any Deep Space Nine episodes I might have wanted.
Nice and simple. I like it.
What the fsck?? Protected downloads are Windows-only?? Why the hell? From Google’s own press release:
The minimum system requirements for running the Google Video Viewer properly are:
– Windows 2000 or higher with latest updates installed
– Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
– Firefox 1.1+, IE 5.0+, or Safari 1.0+
Is the “Google Video Viewer” something different from the “Google Video Player”? I took the above to mean that the service would be Mac-compatible. (And why the hell can’t it be?? They’re not using Microsoft’s DRM, they’re using their own!)
I take back everything good I said about this store. I don’t want hear the “competition is good” bull$#!+. It’s not competition if I can’t use it!!
Also, the front page of Google Video is a joke. A newcomer to the site is given no clue how the hell anything works. The first thing I wanted to know was how to download the player. I had to dig through multiple help pages to learn that it’s automatically downloaded with the first video you download. In iTunes, you’re buying from inside the player, so it’s natural to assume (correctly) that you’re buying something iTunes will play. But this web interface makes no sense.
Hey, Baz, there’s such a thing as “too simple”.
By the way — one thing CBS might like to consider: Google’s video page features NO MARKETING. iTunes entices you to browse and download with attractive graphics. It doesn’t wait for you to click on a pulldown menu; it tells you what’s cooking on the front page. Each TV series has its own attractively-designed page to sell it, with a description of the show.
What’s Google’s answer? Four randomly chosen videos from its collection? And that’s it? No show descriptions AT ALL??
That’s… that’s… I can’t think of a word to describe how idiotic that is! I’ll have to invent one! It’s retardulous!!
JadisOne writes:
“Viacom and its companies are very, very arrogant. They will go around the world twice and back again just to avoid Cupertino.”
Reply: Wrong, and wrong. First, you may not have heard, but CBS has been spun off as a completely separate company with its own stock ticker symbol. So Viacom is not implicated. Second, at least one of Viacom’s companies is working to make content available on ITMS, which is scheduled to happen quite soon. I know because I’m an insider.
I believe the author is guilty of bias. Here are some excerpts from a few of the world’s leading technoheads:
Bill Gates: “Spot on! Excellent. Will integrate seamlessly with Longhorn.”
Steve Balmer”… and Vista, too, boss, and Vista, too. Can I have a cookie?”
Michael Dell: “A rock solid piece of work. A triumph for all PC owners.”