Google Video to shut down, search will stay

Google over the weekend shut down its Google Video service, sending an e-mail to all users that had uploaded content to the service stating playback of hosted content will end on April 29. The move will affect only videos hosted by Google, not the popular video search engine.

The company launched the effort in 2005, aiming to make it similar in concept to YouTube. However, its value to Google came into question the following year when it acquired the company it aimed to compete with for $1.6 billion. Google Video has not accepted new uploads since 2009, when it decided to focus on the search side of things.

"We've always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the Web, regardless of where those videos are hosted," an e-mail to Google Video users read. "And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."

Users are being asked to move videos to YouTube, and to ease the process Google has added a "download" button to the video status page for content contributors. While playback will cease on April 29, content uploaders will have until May 13 to retrieve their content off the site before it is permanently deleted.

Despite the fact that Google Video was never overwhelmingly popular, the search giant is still facing some pushback for its move. At least one online petition has been created to ask Google to reconsider, although only 52 had signed it as of midday Monday.

It seems however in that case users are leaning on Google to at least keep the content available. "Keeping content available on the internet is hard, and we think that many users chose Google Video because they thought that Google is the safest choice to keep the videos available for decades, that you will always make sure that content is preserved. Please do," it reads.