Google - the search king - constantly innovates. Yesterday on the Google Blog, Google Product Manager John Piscitello announced that they were launching the Beta Version of Google Video. According to the release, Google Video “is a new product that enables you to search an index of transcripts from recent TV programs.”

I decided to take Google Video for a test drive today and while it is still an early beta with information for a limited number of channels (dating back to Dec. 2004) it certainly does show some promise.

I was writing an entry about the Best Google Tools You’ve Never Used and I mentioned the Seinfeld episode where Kramer was being overrun with mail order catalogs when I decided to use the new Google Video search to try and find that particular episode. I didn’t know the name of the episode (but I’m sure it started with The …) so I popped on over and typed in my search terms. First I started with Seinfeld Catalogs. Two results: Seinfeld The Hot Tub and Extra. Next, Seinfeld Kramer. Forty-Six Results but none were the episode that I was looking for.

After a number of other searches with related keywords, I decided to go over to the Google Web Search and try to find it. First search, Seinfeld Kramer Catalogs. Result #1 - Seinfeld - The Junk Mail. Found it. I went back to Google Video to see if that would turn up anything and it didn’t. So, evidently that episode has not been cataloged yet.

A Promising Start- Taking a look at some of the other results, you can see that Google Video has some promise. For each result you get the name of the show, the title of the episode, a brief description of what happened and when it last aired. Below the episode information you get stills of the scene(s) in which your search terms were found, the time that they occurred in the show and the text from the transcript with your search terms in bold (see image below).

In addition to the actual results from the show that you selected, Google Video will also display when that show is going air again and a list of upcoming episodes based on your zip code.

There currently is no video included with the Google Video search, in fact they tell you at the top of the result that ‘Video is currently not available,’ but with the right agreements and technology how far off can that be? Soon, we’ll be searching our favorite shows for that one punch line that we can’t seem to remember, all from the convenience of our desktop. With a little help from Google, of course.

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