In many ways Google owns the Web. The majority of people use its search engine to find what they’re looking for, and most of the advertising you see as you travel around belongs to them. Which puts it in a tricky position as arbiter of what is good and bad.

Google Censorship

Since the beginning of the year Google has been filtering its search results with ‘Autocomplete’ and ‘Instant’ services. A few big terms related to peer-to-peer, including “torrent,” “BitTorrent,” and “RapidShare,” were initially removed as Google fended off accusations it was encouraging piracy.

Now, according to TorrentFreak, more terms have been added to the blacklist with individual websites being added as well as the more generic terms. Sites including The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, BTJunkie, and KissAssTorrents now won’t be offered as a suggestion when the first few letters are typed in to Google.

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Blip.tv has come full-circle, now aggregating Web video series as it did at launch. Luckily the quality and quantity of content available to watch on the site has improved considerably since 2005.

Blip.tv

Blip.tv began life all the way back in 2005, which in Web terms makes it a golden oldie of sorts. Blip.tv has for most of its life concentrated on assisting those brave souls who create Web series in the hopes of having a hit. By hosting, distributing, and selling advertising against videos, Blip.tv has become an important part of the online video landscape.

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Clicker has become part of the CBS family, with the latter acquiring the former. As part of the deal, Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone has become President of CBS Interactive.

Clicker

Clicker came out of beta around 18 months ago and offered a new way of finding online video programming. At its heart a search engine built and maintained specially for online video, Clicker allows users to find and view content that is available to watch online. At least from legitimate sources such as Hulu, Amazon, and iTunes.

At the time we profiled the site a year ago, Clicker searched 1,200 sources to find 600,000 episodes from 10,000 shows, but I’m sure all those numbers have gone up since then.

Clicker managed to raise $19 million in funding and built traffic levels up to around 3 million uniques every month. And now it has been bought by U.S. television giant CBS.

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Viral videos are a big part of the Web these days, with individuals and companies alike trying to create something which will take the Internet by storm. But is it possible to predict which videos are going to go viral before they reach take-off point?

Viral Videos

Viral videos are basically just normal videos that transcend their humble origins to become huge hits online. The come in many different flavors, but the two common types are engineered viral videos designed to promote something or someone, and organic viral videos that just happen.

As a prime example of this, YouTube’s Top 5 for 2009 were:

1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)
5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Susan Boyle gained worldwide fame thanks to the viral nature of this clip, while David After Dentist and JK Wedding Entrance Dance hit it big after being produced by amateurs. The New Moon movie trailer is self-explanatory, while the Evian Roller Babies was a genius promotional effort.

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Muziic is a streaming music service which is rapidly growing in popularity. And it works by streaming music videos directly from YouTube. Having been up for a year, I assume it must be legal, yet I can’t see the record labels being very fond of it.

YouTube Music Videos

YouTube has a long and volatile relationship with the big four record labels.

There was a huge falling out when it came time to renegotiate licensing agreements for music videos. Since the first time agreements had been made, YouTube had grown a fair bit, and was starting to bring in revenue, and the record labels wanted a slice of the money pie.

In the end, as a compromise effort, Vevo was born. Vevo is all about music videos, using the popularity of this genre to drive traffic and bring in revenue which is fairly split with the labels who essentially own the artists in question.

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Even the most popular, loved, and revered sites on the Web need to evolve and change. Otherwise the next big thing will emerge to take its place. Which is why YouTube is currently embarking on a sizable redesign, with new features emerging every week.

YouTube Redesign

YouTube began testing its new redesign as part of TestTube, YouTube’s ideas incubator, last December. And while not all of the features and changes of Feather made it through to the final redesign, most have.

The redesign proper began in January, with all extraneous and unnecessary elements removed in favor of a more minimalist look and feel. Those first changes of a month ago were mostly aesthetic, but the newly-unveiled changes are a little more nuts-and-bolts.

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It’s all well and good having a multitude of different options for watching TV on the Web - and the options are increasing all the time - but you need to be able to find the content to be able to watch it. Which is where Clicker comes in.

Clicker has just raised $11 in funding, and must be hoping that traffic will now follow.

But Where Is It?

There are so many ways of watching television online now. YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and the TV networks own Web sites are just a smattering. But with so many sources it’s sometimes hard to know where to start.

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