Google Video

[hothead]

Does anyone remember what Google Video was? I have been hearing more about it by reading old threads like this thread mentioning how 99 percent of something awful, Let's Plays, got wiped out by Google Video's shutdown. So does anyone else remember Google Video and how much valuable content was lost when it shut down?

 

[Maurice Maine]

When I started using the web Google Video still existed but I recall it literally being a YouTube mirror. I don't know if it worked both ways or if things uploaded to it before 2006 were not mirrored on YouTube but I'm pretty sure nothing of value was lost.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think "Google Video" is still around, but now it's the site YT plays vids from. And it is very clear they want everyone to only access the vids on the craptastic YT site.

(Hence all the trying to mess with embedded vids and other frontends with "Video unavailable", "This helps protect our community", "Video unavailable Watch on YouTube" BS.)

 

[jertzog]

I recall never watching anything on it besides the rare "Let's Play" that I'd shut off because I didn't like hearing the goontard's voice.
Websites usually had their own video streaming back then before literally everything got farmed out to YT.

 

[Grim_Autismo]

Google video technically still exists; some of my google videos got migrated to my drive (they were published) and I'll get access requests from time to time from people who want to access the video and I'll let them watch them because they're copies of old cartoons that are impossible to find.

TLDr: old google video links got migrated to google drive a while back, but those links got nuked last year or the year before I think, to try and cut down on piracy. You can still allow people to view the links, they just have to email you about them.

 

[Maurice Maine]

I recall never watching anything on it besides the rare "Let's Play" that I'd shut off because I didn't like hearing the goontard's voice.
Websites usually had their own video streaming back then before literally everything got farmed out to YT.

I think CGR (Mark) and Cinemassacre still have them? Haven't checked.

 

[dick brain]

member viddler

 

[Oliver Onions]

I assumed all Google Video content got merged into YouTube when Google bought that, since they were basically identical platforms.

Google Video stopped allowing uploads in 2009, and YouTube didn't allow 720p uploads until December 2008, so it's safe to assume that 99% of whatever was on Google Video was 480p at best and probably not worth preserving any way.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Google video allowed long videos. At the time YouTube was limited to 10 minutes.

The only google video I remember for sure was Bently Bros Resident Evil 4 parody. I imagine it's cringe now.

 

[Idiotron]

It was a worse Youtube so when Google bought Youtube, there was no point in keeping it around.
No big loss, honestly.
It was cool that you could upload feature length content back in those days though.
I watched quite a few pirated DVDs on that website.

 

[Lady Adjani]

it's safe to assume that 99% of whatever was on Google Video was 480p at best and probably not worth preserving any way.

What made it even worse is how the google page layout stretched out the video by default, on top of having really poor compression.

Whenever you saw their watermark you knew you were in for some shit.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

member viddler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidme
Remember vidme

 

[The Grognard]

I have been hearing more about it by reading old threads like this thread mentioning how 99 percent of something awful, Let's Plays, got wiped out by Google Video's shutdown

The one that caused most damage in archiving old SA LPs was the death of Blip.TV, since that was the primary host of choice for the early 2010's due to being better in most ways than Youtube at the time was.

 

[Oliver Onions]

The one that caused most damage in archiving old SA LPs was the death of Blip.TV, since that was the primary host of choice for the early 2010's due to being better in most ways than Youtube at the time was.

If I remember correctly the main advantage for LPs was that Blip allowed longer uploads. I wonder if the more zoomery Farms members are even aware YouTube used to have a strict 10-minute limit on video length, so if you wanted to LP something like Final Fantasy it would end up being hundreds of parts.

What made it even worse is how the google page layout stretched out the video by default, on top of having really poor compression.

The main thing I remember from both Google and YouTube back then was the constant downtime because they couldn't handle so many people trying to watch videos. You used to have to open a video and leave it for 5-10 minutes to buffer sufficiently that you could watch it the entire way through.

 

[legtard respecter]

i remember it co existing with youtube even during 2009 but just being inferior and laggier in every way

 

[The Grognard]

If I remember correctly the main advantage for LPs was that Blip allowed longer uploads. I wonder if the more zoomery Farms members are even aware YouTube used to have a strict 10-minute limit on video length, so if you wanted to LP something like Final Fantasy it would end up being hundreds of parts.

They also allowed videos to be downloaded very easily without any special tools, which would have been great if people had the foresight to do some.

 

[CoolDudeXD]

I remember google video, it came out around the same time as youtube and i just used it for whatever wasn't available on youtube. I'm also pretty sure it had a longer run time limit than what youtube had at the time which was 10 minutes so that helped it. I think I watched Bleach on there originally.

 

[Enig]

Google Video is how I first witnessed probably one of the greatest high effort shitposts ever made, the result of one SA user getting pissed off about the entire let's play concept and doing a little trolling with a whole series.

It goes to show how old this and GVideo are now that the description of this reupload mentions Synchtube which hasn't been a thing for 12 years.