TV Search Is Coming

Cnet's Stefanie Olsen reports that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are working on digital video search tools. Google's is reportedly the most ambitious plan, with the search giant working together with broadcasters to create a TV search engine, something I correctly predicted they were working on over three weeks ago. Microsoft's efforts center on interactive cable TV, while Google's focus more on broadband internet users. Yahoo, meanwhile, simply wants to index already available multimedia content, much like AOL's Singingfish already does.

Google's project for TV search is ultra-secretive; only a handful of broadcast executives have seen it demonstrated so far. To build the service, the company is recording live TV shows and indexing the related closed-caption text of the programming. It uses the text to identify themes, concepts and relevant keywords for video so they can be triggers for searching.

(via The Unofficial Google Weblog)