Google has only just bought YouTube but already Microsoft is fighting back by striking a deal on Monday with video search engine Blinkx.
About Blinkx
Blinkx is an innovative video search engine that could potentially stem out to be the leader in video search technology.
Like all the emerging video search engines, Blinkx's video index includes sites ranging from YouTube, BBC News, Sky News, Fox and many other sites. The company already boasts six million hours of audio, video and TV programming in its index.
Unlike competing video search technology Blinkx uses speech recognition to discover what the video is about. It still uses textual information like its competitors but combines this with speech recognition which, it beleives sets it above the competition.
I'm not entirely convinced that speech recognition technology is advanced enough to be very useful just yet. I personally think the answer lies in using a community to assist rankings in search results.
Blinkx and Microsoft
Unlike the Google-YouTube deal this is not a takeover but a deal where Blinkx will license its search technology to Microsoft.
Blinkx will be used to power video search on some parts of MSN and Live.com bringing video search capabilities to the existing website search.
The deal would see Blinkx getting paid a license fee dependant on how many people use the "MicroBlinkx" video search. "It could mean from zero to millions of dollars," says Chandratillake, the Blinx co founder (nothing quite like being vague).
Unfortunately for Microsoft this is not an exclusive deal and Blinkx is already working with other companies and may end up working with more.
Blinkx and Lycos
Blinkx signed a deal in August to power the video search of Lycos. Lycos hopes to reinvent itself as a broadband entertainment destination.
This deal is very similar to Microsoft so already they have themselves competition using the exact same technology. I'm sure though that Lycos are more worried about who will come out on top than Microsoft.
Blinkx and AOL
According to another News report Blinkx is used to power AOL video. But I think this is a mix up.
Blinkx technology is used by AOL StudyBuddy to index educational content from selected sites. But when it comes to video search AOL already has its own ideas.
AOL previously acquired video search startup Truveo and is already putting it to good use. It already looks and feels far better than Blinkx.
Blinkx needs help
Take a look through the Blinkx site and you will see they don't have a clue about user friendliness.
Our fellow co-writer Brad Linder recently touched on the features of the Blinkx site and as he experienced, the website strains my PC a little.
Blinkx has an idea of multiple small TV screens showing short video teaser clips to help you choose what to watch, but this just hurts my head. It looks cool for a second but you can't stare at it for too long, nevermind pick a video.
The search results pages are a little better but it still feels a little over crowded and there is too much going on.
Blinkx needs a company like Microsoft to use the technology to its full potential. Hopefully Microsoft can clean this up to make its own user friendly video search using the Blinkx technology.
Threat to YouTube
Its no surprise that this deal is coming through just as Google acquires YouTube and I'm sure Microsoft sees Google's growing dominance as a threat.
I recently discussed the threat of video search to YouTube as it will greatly open up the video sharing market, potentially causing YouTube to lose its market share.
With Microsoft pushing video search this could now happen more quickly than first anticipated. While Google and YouTube present a limited selection of videos hosted on their own sites, Microsoft will offer video clips from nearly everywhere.
It is also good to note that a video search engine, since it hosts no video, is a much better choice from a copyright lawsuit perspective. Microsoft can sit back and watch YouTube and Google get "sued to oblivion" while people still use MSN and Live.com to search for video.
Who's made the better move? Google or Microsoft?
1. FYI, blinkx.com is powered by Autonomy's technology, and they are the #1 search engine for enterprises and government. (They also bought out #2 Verity last year.) The speech reco and video search is some great technology that is genuinely ahead of any of Google's current offerings.
Posted at 3:04AM on Oct 12th 2006 by Lucky Star