Why Google Video Will Fail.

Google recently unveiled its new pay-for Google video offerings. It is my belief that it will fail.

Now let’s define failure for a little bit. When I say “fail”, I don’t mean that Google will face financial troubles and shut down its troubled Google Video. No, quite the contrary, I think it will be a financial success. Bandwidth, after all, is nearly free.

I believe it will be a failure because Google will have ignored 95% of avid internet surfers out there. Instead, it will focus on that 5% that throws money on shirts with silly monikers and expensive gadgets that are never used.

How is Google ignoring its market? Well it goes down to what Google Video is, fundamentally: TV on the Internet. On Google Video, you pay to watch TV shows. And that, in itself, is part of the core of the problem.

People are used to TV being free. Most people, including myself, don’t want to pay to watch something that’s been free and advertisement supported since they were tots. Google, and iTunes before them, have defied this sense however by ditching ads alltogether and charging people $2 to watch shows.

But despite the price, there are issues. When you pay that $2 premium, you’re still quite constraint. The CSI episode that Google Video is featuring, for example, can only be watched for one day. That’s kind of crap, esp. since I could buy the season DVD for the same price per episode. It’s also kind of crap because there’s no reason for that limitation to be there, other than greed. Absolutely no reason.

Furthermore, they’re charging a ripoff rate for crap shows. No parent will ever accept to pay $2 to watch a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, or some dated black and white Western TV show from the 50s. Then there’s the selection, which right now is quite limited. There’s only one random episode of CSI available, and four episodes of Season 2 of Voyager. What nonsense is this?

Google Video also sports some restrictive DRM, which prevents people from watching the shows on their video iPods or PSP. It’s sort of hypocricy – spouting this to be cutting edge technology when in fact you ignore all other advances made in home entertainment and the way people watch their media over the last few years.

I will never buy from Google Video. Ever. Nor will anyone else from my generation. Essentially, we do not have money to waste on semi-functional video clips. PT Barnum once said that a sucker is born ever minute. Unfortunately, Google is counting on it.