Google Inc. is giving final cut to Google Videos – its online video content host – almost 5 years after the company acquired rival YouTube and 2 years after they stopped allowing users to upload their clips to the service.
Both Google Videos and YouTube started in 2005, with YouTube becoming the clear leader Google snapped up the video content host – only to now have their own investment put their own established service out of action.
An email was sent to users confirming the imminent demise of Google Video, with playback ceasing on April 29th: “Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. 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 is kindly setting a May13th deadline for Google Videos users who wish to grab their beloved clips and personal memories and download them for upload to the Google-owned YouTube.
We think however that allowing users some kind of direct Google Videos-to-YouTube transfer would have been a nicer gesture, considering Google have been running the ‘Tube since 2006, but alas this isn’t to be and a troublesome exodus faces a number of uploaders who somehow didn’t see this one coming..
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