Google adds video

The search giant just added another medium to its mix. "Watching the amateur and professional videos in Google's index requires free software available at Video.google.com," the Washington Post reports. "The software, consisting of about 1 megabyte, won't do anything except stream Google's videos through the Internet Explorer or Firefox Web browsers." The feature is still in beta. As with most search engines, people can submit their own work (from Web sites to videos) for inclusion in the database. That can be good and bad. On the upside, the amateur videographer's work can now be as accessible as that of giant media companies - like garage bands on the file-sharing networks. The potential downside is what types of videos become as accessible to children as to anyone else. Surfing around the site, I was glad to find video policies saying that not only is Google not accepting illegal content, such as child pornography. It's also not accepting legal pornography or obscenity. [Yahoo also indexes videos. The difference, which is a plus while Google's player gets debugged, is that Yahoo's video search results can be streamed through well-established players like those of Microsoft and RealNetworks, and "some of Yahoo's videos include programming licensed from major television networks such as CBS and MTV," the Post reports.]