Well... Google just finished up their big CES keynote speech. As rumored, they did announce their video store and a pack of software. Two different blogs (Engadget and LostRemote) had live coverage of the event that featured Larry Page and Robin Williams. Larry provided the announcements and Robin provided the comedy relief.
Google Pack
I've already download the Google Pack. It includes AdAware, Google Earth, Norton Antivirus, Acrobat Reader, Google Screensaver, Google Desktop, Picasa, Real Player, Google Talk, FireFox in the initial download. If you already have a current version of any of the software, it will skip that part of the download. With the Norton AV download, it will first check to make sure it doesn't conflict with a competing AV package. After it performs the initial download, the software packages are installed silently in the background. The Google Pack Updater will also download any updates that are released for the Pack. In addition to the above software, Trillian, Google Video Player, GalleryPlayer, and Google Talk are made available as optional downloads.
If you look at the list of included apps, Google Pack does not appear to be all that new. However, the advantage of Google Pack is the updater app. It provides a seemless way of downloading, installing, and updating apps. For advanced users, this would be easy to do on their own. For novice PC users, Google Pack will make their lives easier. More information is available on Google's Official Blog and at the Google Pack website.
Google Video Store
During the keynote, several partners were revealed that are releasingt content via Google Video. The two biggies were CBS and the NBA. According to the major media news sites, the pricing scheme will be similar to iTunes-$1.99 for TV shows and $3.95 for NBA games. The quality is expected to be about 640x480 and if the content producer allows it, you can transfer the video to other devices (like the iPod). Oh... The videos will be commercial free.
For me, I still don't like the price of $1.99 for a TV show that I basically already paid for with my current cable subscription. I know... this version is without commercials and is available on demand. I guess I am just spoiled. For the past couple of years, I have been using BitTorrent to download a lot of my TV. If the major studios provide a way to download the shows (with BitTorrent or Google Video), I would be willing to allow them to leave the commercials in. Heck, you would think they would work out a way to insert targeted ads with a Google AdSense type system.
Anyway... That's all I have for now. I'll post more as soon as I have had time to play with Google Pack and the video store (no word on when it goes live).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment