People are increasingly obtaining the option to watch online video on their televisions thanks to Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes, and video games consoles. Is this an area of growth which should be nurtured?

PC Vs TV

Until now, and even at this point, the vast majority of people use their computers, and only their computers, to access the Internet. It just makes sense, with a PC or laptop made for the job with its crisp monitor and mouse and keyboard combination.

But things are slowly changing. Mobile Internet is becoming big business, rapidly growing all over the world but especially in Asia. And the number of living room devices that can be hooked up to the Web is also growing at a seemingly exponential rate.

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Although it was am obvious move that many were surprised didn’t happen sooner, the culling of Google Video is still big news. Will Google Video now evolve into something else? And will Google’s new focus on YouTube mean the site fulfils its obvious potential?

Bound To Happen

When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, two things were clearly marked to happen. The first was YouTube being turned into a profit-making entity, and the second was that Google Video’s time was sure to be up.

Google has for the last year or so been making mammoth efforts to turn YouTube’s potential into the money maker it clearly deserves to be. But until now there has been little happening on the Google Video side of things.

Google Video Dead

Now though, faced with a crumbling worldwide economy that is even affecting the biggest and brightest companies, Google has acted. Google Video is being effectively killed off along with five other seemingly worthless products.

In a series of blog posts this week, Google announced the demise of Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebooks, Jaiku, and the application we as an online video site are concerned with, Google Video.

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We all know by now of the problems YouTube has been facing regarding copyrighted material on the site. But is the solution to an ongoing legal issue to delete audio tracks from videos? Surely this is just another nail in the coffin of user-generated content.

From Lawless To Lawsuit

When YouTube broke into the mainstream, it was a pretty lawless place, with copyrighted material being uploaded all over the place, and no real system in place for copyright holders to take steps to protect their rights.

This obviously couldn’t last and a combination of Google buying the site, and that still-ongoing $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom conspired to force changes. And YouTube has improved massively in this respect.

Audio Vs Video

There is the much-maligned Video Identification system now in place, which allows copyright holders to easily check for their content being illegally used. They can then have it removed or monetize the video for their own ends. The latter of which has been used very successfully by some companies.

Music or audio tracks have always been part of this system, with copyright holders notified of violations. But now, Google has started removing the audio tracks while leaving the videos in place, meaning YouTube has become a wasteland of creepy silent videos.

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It seems that the last people to adopt and adapt to new technology are politicians, the people we rely on to run our countries and keep everything ticking over while we live our lives. But this age-old trend seems to be slowly changing, as the new YouTube channels for U.S. politicians attest to.

The Politics Of Getting Elected

Politicians are a funny lot, gaining power by promising to deliver what people want and then, in the main, completely failing to do so when they’ve been elected. And a lot of them soon forget who it was that put them there in the first place: we, the people.

They will, of course, do their duty of listening and interacting with the public when needed, but most won’t go out of their way to speak directly to you, the person who pays their wages and who they work for.

Using Technology

Lucky then that technology is providing more ways than ever for us to interact with our public servants. The recent U.S. Presidential election showed the many and varied ways in which Barack Obama reached out, and it worked fantastically well, connecting him to the people able to vote him into office.

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TV.com was part of the acquisition of CNet for $1.8 billion by CBS last year. The site with the valuable domain name is now in the process of being turned into what the TV network hopes will become the ultimate Web video destination.

An Evolving TV.com

I know TV.com as an information and community resource all about television. If there was a new series that I needed to find out about, or a need to check the episode guide for Lost or Heroes, TV.com would be my first port of call.

While those factors remain, with new added social networking features, the site is now being rapidly turned into a comprehensive database of online video. If there’s content to be had, CBS wants it on TV.com.

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Boxee was already gaining great publicity and plaudits for being one of the most promising. But at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, the company behind the platform added new content providers to its line-up, making it an even more intriguing and useful prospect.

In case you haven’t heard of it by now, Boxee is a free, open-source piece of software that allows PC users to access all their Web video from one central location. It can also be used when your PC or Mac is connected to a TV, with all operations possible via a remote control.

Work In Progress

Boxee works as a cross-platform media center that pulls content from a number of sources and allows its users to view it all from one central location. It also has many social networking functions which allow content to be shared or recommended.

Boxee is still a work in progress but has moved from beta to open alpha for both Mac and Linux users. The Windows version of the software is still in closed, invite-only alpha but the invite-only prohibition should change early in 2009.

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The Internet has allowed citizen journalism to really come into its own in recent years, and Web video is a big part of that trend. Footage of the Oscar Grant shooting filmed by people on their mobile phones and uploaded to YouTube could actually help bring justice.

Citizen Journalism

A lot has been said about citizen journalism over the past few years. While the old guard and organizations who rely on a kind of monopoly on news may not be fans, the rest of us appreciate being able to get a different side of the story from people actually at the scene.

Citizen journalism isn’t limited just to video of course. Sites such as Twitter are updated on a regular basis with people’s first hand accounts of breaking news stories. But seeing video footage taken from someone on the scene of a news event takes some beating.

Oscar Grant Shooting

And so it has proved in the case of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Californian who was shot dead by police in the early hours of the morning on New Year’s Day.

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