Photo: Engadget
Google's CES keynote was sufficiently well leaked that there was nothing new in it, but it still proved to be an entertaining Robin Willliams show. As before, the guys at Engadget provided live coverage, with photos, until a design flaw in their Sony CyberShot camera intervened*.
The Google Video Store is a commercial service where users can search Google -- or browse by category -- for some TV-style content, encoded for Windows in a format Larry Page can't remember ("It's not H264, I think it's 640x320"), which may optionally use Google's own DRM copy-protection system. You can apparently watch this as long as you are online, and you pay Google whatever the content provider decided to charge. (Note: Premium content "will only be available in the US" for now.) The fee is split with 30% going to Google.
This is an alternative to searching the Torrents for a copy of the same content without DRM, probably in a much higher resolution, that you can save to CD/DVD and watch wherever you want for no cost at all. In other words, Google Video is targeted at people who don't have too much clue -- and probably bad news for Apple's iTunes.
If the video content is not copy-protected, it will play on non-Windows systems. Google says: "iPod and Sony Playstation Portable users will also be able to download and watch any non-copy-protected content from Google Video, and even get it specially optimized for playback on their devices."
Google Pack is the downloadable software bundle previously described below (Google video, Google DRM, and a Googlepack of software?). The main "added value" is that you can download a bunch of stuff at once, with one licence agreement, and use the Google Updater to keep them up to date.
However, it's not really a pack in the sense I originally understood it. It's just a list of programs that you can either download or not, just by clicking a Remove link for stuff you don't want. So there's no reason why it couldn't include large suites like OpenOffice and programs that most people already have and therefore don't want. And there's no reason why it couldn't include Microsoft programs, if Microsoft agreed.
As usual, Mac and Linux users are second class citizens. Google Video and Google Pack are both for Windows only. However, a Mac version of Google Video is in the works.
* Update: My bad: it was the Yahoo keynote coverage (below) that inlcuded the following: "Our camera batteries just rolled down the aisle, so we won't even try to shoot blurry pix of the trailer he's going to show for Mission Impossible 3. BIG strike against the CyberShot for putting the memory card in the same compartment as the spring-loaded batteries."
