The deal comes during a busy period for online video and may enhance AOL's competitive positioning against Google's and Yahoo's video search services.AOL announced today the acquisition of Truveo, a Burlingame, CA-based video search service that indexes video by "visually crawling" its content.
The deal was finalized December 21, 2005. Financial terms were not disclosed.
AOL.com plans to announce a "single, comprehensive and robust 'one-stop-shop' search experience" once Truveo is integrated into the company's other video and search products, according to AOL's press release.
Representatives from both companies were unavailable for comment.
AOL's acquisition of Truveo is its third such move in the video search arena, following the purchase of Seattle-based SingingFish in 2003 and the launch of AOL Video Search in June of last year.
Online video and search technologies lately have been extremely popular among consumers and the companies that try to serve them.
Last October, Apple Computer Inc. announced video downloads via its iTunes online music store. Several media producers, such as ABC, NBC and Disney, subsequently announced online video distribution deals.
Most recently, Google announced its expanded Google Video Search service, which allows consumers to download or view streaming media from CBS and the NBA, among other producers.
Starz Entertainment Group also recently announced a new movie download service called Vongo.
Truveo was AOL's fifth announced corporate acquisition of 2005. Previous acquisitions included Music Now LLC in November, Weblogs Inc. in October, and Xdrive Inc. and Wildseed Ltd. in August.
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