Monday, February 26, 2007

Google Video Plusbox

While searching Google for nightwish videos, Razvan Antonescu spotted this video plusbox* (ignore the blue link bars in the screenshot, they’re from a Firefox extension). Alongside a snippet from Google Video, a plus icon appeared with a link reading “show video"; a click on it slides open a direct video result. I can’t reproduce it, so it may be a new prototype – does anyone else get this?

This is a smart way to integrate yet another type of content after the existing Maps and Finance plusboxes, and good news for lazy, casual searching, because you don’t need to understand which special search engine fits your goal best. The approach goes along with Google’s minimalist homepage; why link to dozens of search services when web search integrates most of them? And who knows, if Google aims to create “one search to rule them all,” in the future we might see similar plusboxes for (fair use) music content, image content, book content, or Checkout shopping sites.

*Whereas a Google onebox is a special result on top of the organic hits, a plusbox (or “plus box”) is integrated right into organic results.

[Thanks Razvan!]

Google Video Plusbox by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (17)

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