Google Video: New and Improved for Businesses

Google announced a new video hosting feature this week as part of the Google Apps Premier Edition suite of services, which sells for $50 per year per user. The service is targeted at businesses.

This is the very topic - using business internal videos - I will be talking about at KM World, so I'm happy to be able to show you even more support for video distribution. In the past Google Video would host your video for free and make it unsearchable. However, that isn't the same as private and secure.

The new service lets you:
• Upload videos for viewing securely and privately
• Search the video library
• Permission videos for individuals to view (if you want to)
• Rate videos
• View highest rated and most popular videos in the library
• Move from scene to scene, using thumbnails below the video to navigate directly to specific segments or images


Where the new service really shines, and sets itself apart from the crowd, and really provides value worth paying for are in collaboration features.

The collaboration features include:
• Enables users to make comments or add feedback on specific scenes (i.e. the information here isn't correct or needs to be modified or is super helpful)
• Ability to embed (while still maintaining permission rights - that's a biggie) in web pages

On the other hand, YouTube still offers plain vanilla FREE video hosting service, with private video sharing for up to 25 users invited by you. But it doesn't offer the added features for collaboration nor the cachet or team-building fun of having your own group video area.

Watch this video to how some business and government users describe the benefits of the new Google video hosting service and what's included:



This should be a total win for businesses, who were so often overly challenged by trying to get a broadband video hosting solution. It was complicated, horrible, and unpredictable in the past trying to purchase a solution. (Been there, done that, have the teeshirt, etc.) The Google solution will work for a number of companies who thought that getting a video hosting contract was too complicated, time consuming and expensive. And IT may be relieved that it doesn't have to be involved, except to vet security.

For all the details on the Google Video for Business service, click here.

(To repeat, the $50 a year licensing fee (per user) includes a large number of features, of which the video hosting is just one of the components.)

This is a great solution for groups who want to have their own video nest for a low cost.

Educational groups will be able to use a special version for education which will be free through March and will then cost $10 per user after the initial period.