Google Video Running Commercials
Boing Boing noticed that Google Vidoe now includes commercial interruption in some clips. Check out this Charlie Rose clip:
As you’ll notice, when the video plays, two blue squares appear in the progress bar. When the video reaches the blue squares, it starts a commercial, 15 seconds in length. You can skip the blue boxes, but once the commercial starts, you need to go to the end of it to return to the video. What’s worse is the video fades out before the commercial, and in after, so it interrups Charlie as he’s speaking and you miss part of the video.
Here are screenshots in case the commercials are removed:
The video with the blue boxes:
The commercial running, for Allstate:
Actually, the worst part is that the Charlie Rose video was already uploaded with commercials, so you have to sit through even more.
[…] Nathan Weinberg points to this Charlie Rose clip from Google Video. Once you begin watching the video you’ll notice two blue boxes in the video time progress bar. […]
Pingback by Google Video Adds TV Style Commercial Breaks | January 8, 2007
The fact that it has commercials doesn’t bother me all that much, I just think it’s a pity you can’t download some Google Videos in a good file format (XviD/x264-encoded .avi/.mp4). The one you linked to is an example of this.
Comment by Tim | January 8, 2007
It’s been around for a while, some time between October and November…
Comment by Haochi | January 8, 2007
You again?
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