Anyone out there using Google Video? Didn’t think so. Then you won’t have to worry that Google announced this weekend that its shutting down Google Video.
It makes perfect sense since Google owns YouTube, which is the largest online video content website anywhere with 144.1 million unique visitors per month.
“Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback,” read an email sent to Google Video users. “Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the Web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.”
Google says that you can still view uploaded content up until April 29th, when the service will shut down. They added a button so that you can download content, but that will stop on May 13th. Makes perfect sense since the video content will be done on the 29th of the previous month? I don’t get that either.
“We encourage you to move your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already,” Google continued. “YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner.”
I didn’t even know people still used Google Video. I’m surprised they waited this long to shut it down.