Bing, Microsoft’s latest attempt at changing Internet search, has already caused controversy thanks to its live video thumbnails search results. Not only is porn accessible on the site, but being able to play videos without ever visiting the source raises possible fair use concerns.

Internet Search Options

The Internet search market is dominated by one company – Google. The company boasts an almost two-thirds share of the market, managing 64.2 percent of all searches compared to the 20.4 percent managed by Yahoo! and just 8.2 percent by Microsoft. No wonder then that Microsoft is currently rebranding and re-energizing its search engine.

The result is Bing, which launched over the weekend. It’s very much like Google, sharing many of the same features and elements as the market leader, including results for online video. But Microsoft is also trying to redefine the power of search, which it’s managing to do already, just not in the way it intended. The name just makes me think of Chandler Bing from Friends (pictured above) but there’s worse to come.

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The Pirate Bay today went on trial on charges of copyright theft, promoting copyright infringements, and profiting from the file-sharing of copyrighted material. Let’s take a look at the facts behind the Internet piracy trial of the decade.

The Trial Begins

The case against The Pirate Bay, and four people connected with the site in particular, has been two and a half years in the making. Ever since the torrent tracker’s offices were raided in May, 2006, the police, the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and various copyright holders have been preparing to attack.

The four people in the dock for this trial are three of the site’s administrators, Hans Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom who is alleged to have bankrolled the venture early on in its life.

While these four people are the ones on trial, The Pirate Bay itself, and the process it uses to enable peer-to-peer file-sharing to take place is the real target. The prosecutors know that taking down these men, and taking them for every penny they own in the process, will not actually kill the site. So this trial also aims to have the site taken down, and be a catalyst for hardened laws against illegal BitTorrent sharing.

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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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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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It’s hardly news that Google is desperately trying to turn YouTube in to a money-making venture rather than the high-traffic, low-revenue property it currently is. But are the latest two monetization methods a step too far?

We’ve been keeping a watchful eye on the many and varied ways in which YouTube is being monetized here on WebTVWire, and the past few months have seen a lot of effort being put in to the site.

Monetization Efforts

We’ve seen pre-roll and post-roll adverts introduced, the YouTube homepage filled with banner ads, and a variety of different deals with media companies to improve both content and profits.

These include CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, and independent producers. Then there are the new ‘click to buy’ adverts being added to music videos and the like.

In the last few days, Google has announced two new methods for monetizing YouTube: Sponsored video search results, and overlay adverts on embedded partner videos.

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Web video is forever increasing in popularity and number, so being able to find what you are looking for is becoming as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. VideoSurf may soon be able to help.

While Google may have the text search market virtually sewn up, video search is another matter altogether. While there are various competitors, not one has become the dominant force.

VideoSurf Enters The Fray

VideoSurf is a new contender to have entered the playing field, and it offers something radically different from the rest of the crowd – visual video search.

The company has only just launched at the recent TechCrunch50 conference, but it is already gaining a lot of buzz around the Internet for its innovative approach to providing users with a suitable system for searching for videos.

The amount of officially sanctioned free television content on the Web is growing rapidly. The problem is: many people don’t yet know of its existence, and those that do, have no way of keeping up with additions, and finding the content easily.

Blinkx has hopefully solved the latter problem with its new Blinkx Remote service. Initially available in the UK, but with a US-centric version to follow, it’s kind of like a Google for free TV content on the Web. It shares similarities with services like tVadio.com and FindInternetTV.com

Blinkx Remote was originally launched in April 2007 but didn’t seem to make good headway and Blinkx is now relaunching a new and improved version of the service.

BBC iPlayer & More

Blinkx Remote filters out all of the illegal content, the spam and falsely tagged material that clogs up the Web to bring a fast and easy way of searching the Web for where you can watch your favourite programmes online in full.

The UK service aggregates all the content from the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV.com and Demand Five, plus the US networks that allow more than just US viewers to watch content online.