Video Search Bragging Rights: Blinkx Says It Is Bigger Than Google Video
May 16, 2008
For those stuck in northbound traffic on the slow moving river of traffic that is Highway 101, a quite large billboard that told me that Blinkx is the world’s largest video search engine.” In mid-May 2008, a rumor swirled across the Internet that News Corp. was kicking Blinkx’s tires. Was an acquisition in the wind? Was this billboard part of an acquisition campaign? Was it a reminder to Silicon Valley that Google’s span of control did not include video search?
I was sensitive to digitized video for two reasons. The Auto Channel told me that it has thousands of hours of automotive-related video. One interesting aspect of this is that when a video gets “hot”, it gets a great deal of traffic. What’s mystifying, if I understood what The Auto Channel told me, is that it’s very hard to predict what will strike the user’s fancy.
The other reason is that I spoke with a programmer who once did a bit of work for a couple of the large European video services. I can’t reveal the name of the project this person worked on, but it rhymes with “goosed”. The point was that video is flooding the Internet, and it is difficult to generate enough revenue to keep up with the research, development, programming, and bandwidth charges. Video on a metered line is important to many users, but, if I understood his comments, those users don’t pay. Advertisers want “tight” demographics, and the usage data aren’t compelling enough to allow some video sites to generate enough cash to stay alive at this time.
I am not sure how much video Blinkx has indexed. I heard from one of my sources that Google receives more than 1.2 million video uploads per month. I recall reading that the GOOG accounts for more than 60 percent of video search traffic, but since the ComScore traffic flap, it’s tough to know just how much traffic Google has. Could be 70 percent, maybe more. A few days ago, ComScore said Google was the number one Web site on earth. Maybe? Maybe not? Google knows because it does not have to estimate its traffic. My sources tell me that Google just counts traffic, no sampling necessary, to skew the data.
The Blinkx tag line is “Over 26 million hours of video. Search it all.” Their system appears to have a slather of patent documents in place. I tallied more than 100 when I stopped counting. Its conceptual search that includes speech recognition, neural networks, and machine learning to create text transcripts. That text is then searched.
I looked at the BBN Technologies system (né Podzinger and now EveryZing) a year or so ago and found it interesting. The technologies required to take audio or the audio data from a video are of intense interest to those in law enforcement, military intelligence, and government contractors working in related fields. For the average user like me, I found a large number of false drops. My test queries with other audio and video search systems is about the same as my BBN trial. The technology is coming along, but the number of false drops suppressed my appetite for these systems. Alas, the indexing of podcasts was not available to me when I visited the site on May 15 and May 16.
The good news is that Pluggd is alive and seems reasonably well. You can find, watch, listen, collect, and share audio and video content on this service. I did a search for This Week in Tech (TWIT), hosted by Leo LaPorte. Alas, even though the show is featured on Pluggd’s splash page, no TWIT that I could find. The service was easy to use, and the designers were thinking of a couch potato, not a mouse potato, which is a good decision.
Overall, Blinkx has whizzy technology. Wisely Blinkx processes more than 350 US and non-US content sources into categories. Google video does the same thing. Yesterday a 20-something demonstrated CollegeHumor.com to me, and I found that it worked reasonably well if you are looking for frat guys jumping naked into swimming pools.
Just as a test, I searched for videos of one of my favorite bands, Evanescence, figuring it was unique enough a name to get a decent percentage of accurate search results: Blinkx, 31,000, Google, 68, YouTube 116,000, and Yahoo! (http://video.yahoo.com) 239. This does not take into account, however, functions that remove duplicate content, another sticking point when simply counting videos. You need to run your own test. Mine suggests the Google’s Video and YouTube properties are slightly larger than other video index entries at this moment for this specific query.
As I clicked through the delightful music of Evanscence, I realized that each of these services index one another. Some remove duplicates and copyrighted content. Other services may not be mindful of duplicates and copyright. Again: you will need to run your own tests.
One odd datum popped up during my tests. Blinkx appears to use Google Analytics to count page hits and record user behavior. Blinkx uses Autonomy’s high-profile search technology. The founder of Blinkx guru is Suranga Chandratillake, and his company has claimed “the largest” trophy.
Video search is changing fast. Blink once. The video search leader board may change.
Jessica Bratcher, May 16, 2008
Comments
11 Responses to “Video Search Bragging Rights: Blinkx Says It Is Bigger Than Google Video”
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Blinkx is just amazing i visit it every day nearly and the best video search engine
by miles out there far moer acurate than google and all the others.
thanks Ellen.
Wow, quite an endorsement. Take a screenshot of your feedback and send it along to Autonomy’s PR team. At my age, I’m enthusiastic about two things. [a] Waking up in the morning and [b] my ability to detect certain types of intellectual enthusiasm.
Today, both of my minimal requirements have been met.
Stephen Arnold, May 31, 2008
I take it you don’t share my view but as for your comment , sarcasm is the
dimmest form of wit.
I rest my case.
Hi, E Thomas, thanks for sharing your point of view. As I said in the run up to this Web log, my goal is to share my personal views and information on this Web log. My logo is a squawking goose, and I believe there are photos of me wearing bunny rabbit ears. Now, I’m not too swift–living in rural Kentucky and eating burgoo twice a day–but I think that free services and Web logs that one uses to express personal opinions may have a certain friskiness that doesn’t surface in other types of publications; for example, my for fee studies and my monthly column in KMWorld. So, if you find my tone and style uncomfortable, may I suggest that you do the ostrich trick: bury your head in the sand and don’t read what I post as my personal views.
Have an outstanding day!
Stephen Arnold, June 10, 2008)
I was just haveing an outstanding day ! until i came back on here and read that crap, but if you have got something sensible to say regarding Blinkx which is why i visited this website i may be interested but you have posted 2 comments and
not once mentioned anything direct about this company .
Thanks.
Hi, E Thomas,
Thanks for your comment on my opinion. I appreciate your input. I’m puzzled by “two” comments and “this company”. Feel free to chastise me and amplify your comments. I find the video search space fascinating. YouTube seems to be the largest search engine, but there are some monetization issues associated with it. If Blinkx is “larger”, then any information you have about its monetization would be qujite useful. Keep in mind that my disclaimer points out that I can change my mind, so data are really helpful.
Thanks for reading my free, opinionated Web log,
Stephen Arnold, June 15, 2008
Hi Mr Arnold .
The question of monetizeing Blinkx technology i believe has already being
answered in a few ways they are supposed to have 350 partnerships now
with quite a few big names so they are generating substantial income flows
through these partnerships also they power MSN through a liscence
agreement with Microsoft and are very close to powering the BBC i player
so would you agree that Blinkx technology is in great demand this is
without all the other areas of their buisness like BBTV.
In such a short space of time and surpased all exspectations up to now.
first of all youtube is NOT a search engine. It is a community web portal.
Blinkx is a search engine. what ever youtube has, it can be also searchable on blinkx plus the rest of the internet. they are two different things.
blinkx has the technology and business model to monetize online video. google and youtube do not know how.
after the lawsuit, youtube will certainly look for ways to cover up their mistakes. it is very possible that google will acquire blinkx. blinkx is organically growing at a very fast pace. traffic and partnerships are increasing on a daily basis. google is losing the battle in online video and they should better get their hands on blinkx technology and business model soon.
Tech Guru, I appreciate your passion. When I first wrote the bulk of this post, YouTube.com was a search engine. Since then, Google created a separate video search. Per my editorial policies, I don’t update these posts. You will find, therefore, anachronisms. The material in my for fee studies is updated prior to publication.
With regards to what YouTube.com will or won’t do, I understand how you can set certain options. However, in the midst of litigation, some degrees of freedom are reduced; others increased. Right now, I can’t predict what the Googlers will or will not do. YouTube.com could become a big enough problem for Google that orphaning it may make sense, but that’s a move that’s on which I find it hard to peg a probability score.
Keep posting, and I trust you will preserve your passion. Just keep the limitations of this free Web log in mind. Some of the information I posted today dates from 1999. But with three or four readers, I will hear about “old” or “wrong” data.
Stephen Arnold, July 12, 2008, 11 30 am Eastern
[…] VideoSurf’s competition is Google Video Search and blinkx. We wrote about blinkx back in May here. […]
[…] The honking goose will fly over its available information and update this Blinkx coverage. My earlier essay about Blinkx is here. […]