“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.
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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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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
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”gulp” style=”border:0;” />
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.”