Google "Wants all The World's Video," and File Size DOES NOT MATTER!

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All the world's videos? That's a lot of storage! We knew that Google Video had changed its user interface and video approval process just a couple weeks ago and we had some questions for Hunter Walk, a Business Product Manager at Google Video when I visited the Googleplex in Mountain View, Ca. on Friday with my associate Kate Lyon (We posted some of the interview about Google Video late Friday night.)

We were stunned to hear from Hunter that Google Video DOES NOT LIMIT THE LENGTH OF FILE SIZE. Here’s the Google upload guidelines – see for yourself. The implications of this are enormous. It boggles the mind to consider the amount of storage needed for such an undertaking.

YouTube and Yahoo! Video limits video size to 100 MB. The nifty hosting service we use, VideoEgg, keeps files uploads to under five minutes.

Hunter told Beet.TV that Google wants to upload “all the world’s videos” – unlimited file size is certainly a bold step in that direction.

What follows are the comments given to Beet.TV by Hunter Walk, Google on June 9 and published today, June 13, 2006:

“So, as you point out, Google Video doesn’t have any restrictions on file size or numbers of videos you can give us. When we say we want all the world’s video, we really do want all the world’s video. And while when people think of web video, they often think of short two, three, four, five minute clips, there is actually a lot of popularity in the longer form video, both in professional media that’s coming on-line, such as maybe movies, and TV shows, but also in user created video of great length. Some examples would be, there are some 9/11, or September 11^th documentaries that were originally only available on Google Video and these range in length from 15 minutes to 90 minutes, very long form, that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have a place to get distribution, but these individuals are able to just upload them to Google Video and then direct interested parties to Google Video to playback, or even embed them on their websites to play to their own audience.”

-- Andy Plesser

Andy and Kate at the Googleplex

Also, check out the front page story in today's New York Times by John Markoff and Saul Hansell about Google's huge new computing center in Oregon --  we wonder if some of those giant files from Google Video will reside there?

And thanks to Ellen Lee at the San Francisco Chronicle for her reference to The Beet in her post on Robert Scoble's decision to leave Microsoft.

Google, Google Video, Online Video, Consumer Generated Media, Hunter Walk, John Markoff, Saul Hansell, New York Times