Until now, Google's "video" has been pretty lame because it didn't really offer any, well, video. I've recently reported signs that Video2 was close, and Battelle says it will release today. Read him for the details, or check out video.google.com.

This is a big deal, and a direct challenge to Microsoft:

• Google's providing free hosting and bandwidth
• Google's viewer is free, and the code will be released free to developers as open source
• The viewer will run on PC, Mac and Linux
• Video will be searchable
• Inline viewing, right within search results, without downloading codecs
  

And the one element that could make Google Video more than just a curiosity is that Google is creating a market for content that will allow content creators to get paid. That in itself could make Google Video an unstoppable force.

Next step: Google TV in your living room where you want to watch it. By releasing the viewer as open-source, Google has just enabled TiVo, Akimbo and even MCE to make this real. Brilliant.

Update June 27, 2005 09:31 PDT: It's live. I installed the video player (very fast, easy and painless). Works well with Firefox and IE. Video search shows screenshots and transcript at 30-second intervals, and allows instant playback starting anywhere in the video stream. Only inline, streaming viewing for now, does not allow the user to download a video file to their harddisk. And the images are uniformly small and low-quality, even if the original was uploaded large and high-quality.

Current implementation looks very limited, with a small selection of test videos that have been uploaded. And commercial TV shows are still shown as screen shots with a snippet of transcript, with no option to play the video. The hyperbole you've read at buygoogle about Google TV is a ways off yet -- but can you see the potential?