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THE FUTURE IS NOW
First there was inclusion of video in the iTunes music store, an now, with Friday’s announcement by Google, is the new Google Video Store, currently online in a beta version. For those slow to the party, here’s a good Los Angeles Times piece by Chris Gaither explaining Google’s approach, which allows producers to upload their own videos and set their own price for downloads and decide whether or not to allow copy-protection. (The copy-protected works on the site use Google’s proprietary technology and are annoyingly not transferable to video iPods.) Google is launching the service with 5,000 titles, including films distributed by our friends at GreenCine.
One savvy early adopter of the Google service is Ben Rekhi, producer of the film Bomb the System and director of the L.A.-set disaster pic Waterborne (pictured), which we’ve covered previously in Mary Glucksman’s In Focus column. Rekhi is streaming the film for free on Google for this first week of the service and then will be selling a downloadable version for $4.99 that is DVD-burnable.
