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Easily accessible multimedia content
is the key driver to the power of rich media. This depends
upon search engine capability. Our 2006 review of search engine
capability netted the following results.
In true convergence, search engines are focusing on rich
media indexing capabilities, or multimedia search. This is
largely being driven by consumer demand for multimedia content
and the projected decline of paid search. In an effort to
retain their markets, search engines are growing their multimedia
search capabilities, in spite of many rich media content files
being hidden behind spider thwarting obstacles.
AltaVista Video
Now part of Yahoo, AltaVista was the first search engine
to offer audio and video search capabilities. Yahoo! Video
Search powers AltaVista and AllTheWeb.
MSN Video
Overall MSN Video streamed 60 million clips in January 2005.
Yahoo! Video Search: Yahoo! launched its video search engine
at the end of 2004. It supports advanced searching by format
(e.g., .avi, .mpg, .ram, .wmv, etc), relative file size, duration,
and domain. Still currently the best offering with nearly
1 million indexed videos. With its distribution via AltaVista
and AllTheWeb it is fast winning multimedia fans.
Singingfish
AOL owned, Singingfish as part of its effort to attract and
retain broadband users. It’s paid inclusion program
claims 5 million searches a day from distribution partners
including AOL, RealOne, and WindowsMedia. Uses a similar indexing
approach to Yahoo Video.
Google Video
Google Video launched early 2005 indexes transcript snippets
along with video stills. Although expectations are for something
solid, Google is still trailing in its multi media search
capability with Google Video still in Beta at the end of 2006.
Video index is limited by the comparative lack of video clips.
Google Video uses geotargeting to internationally limit regions
where its videos can be played. Google users in China, UAE,
Germany, Korea, France, India, Pakistan and other regions
cannot play videos directly from the Google Video page. They
need to download files and play in their own media players.
Blinkx.tv
Captures and storing video and audio from television and
radio broadcasts. It uses speech recognition technology to
create a searchable transcript of each broadcast. Current
sources include BBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, and NPR.
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