Google Launches Two Localized Products: Video Search and Transit

Written by Luyi Chen on September 21, 2007
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Google video transitSeveral hours ago, Google launched Chinese version of Video Search and a lab stage product — Google Transit.

While I was typing the address of Chinese Google Video into my browser, I thought it would be a limited way to access some videos in its US version, which is not available in China. In fact, it isn’t.

Google Video is similar to Baidu Video. It indexes content from Chinese video sharing sites, then makes them searchable in one place. Google’s search result has more details than Baidu. It provides more descriptions, length of the video and user rating on the original site. In advanced search options, users can focus in certain topic like sports, music, etc. But I assume this relies heavily on the accurateness of the original site.

The result can be filtered by length of the video. It seems to be a good way to look for full length films. You can also sort the result according to rating and hotness of the video on the original site.

Transit search would be a useful service. It’s similar to Sogou and Ddmap. Gary Xu, founder of Ddmap, claims that they are getting 400,000 hits in Shanghai every day for transit search.

Google Transit currently supports five cities including Shanghai and Beijing. It’s not easy to review the quality of these services if not using them regularly. But it seems they have some common limitations in treating obstacles like rivers and bridges.

Thanks ilmay for the tips.

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