Google has only just bought YouTube but already Microsoft is fighting back by striking a deal on Monday with video search engine Blinkx.

About Blinkx

Blinkx is an innovative video search engine that could potentially stem out to be the leader in video search technology.
Like all the emerging video search engines, Blinkx's video index includes sites ranging from YouTube, BBC News, Sky News, Fox and many other sites.
Unlike competing video search technology Blinkx uses speech recognition to discover what the video is about.
Blinkx and Microsoft

Unlike the Google-YouTube deal this is not a takeover but a deal where Blinkx will license its search technology to Microsoft.

Blinkx will be used to power video search on some parts of MSN and Live.com bringing video search capabilities to the existing website search.

Blinkx and Lycos

Blinkx signed a deal in August to power the video search of Lycos. Lycos hopes to reinvent itself as a broadband entertainment destination.

Blinkx needs help

Take a look through the Blinkx site and you will see they don't have a clue about user friendliness.

Blinkx has an idea of multiple small TV screens showing short video teaser clips to help you choose what to watch, but this just hurts my head. It looks cool for a second but you can't stare at it for too long, nevermind pick a video.

Threat to YouTube

Its no surprise that this deal is coming through just as Google acquires YouTube and I'm sure Microsoft sees Google's growing dominance as a threat.
While Google and YouTube present a limited selection of videos hosted on their own sites, Microsoft will offer video clips from nearly everywhere.

It is also good to note that a video search engine, since it hosts no video, is a much better choice from a copyright lawsuit perspective. Microsoft can sit back and watch YouTube and Google get "sued to oblivion" while people still use MSN and Live.com to search for video.
source: pvrwire.com

written by Florin C.