Never to be left far behind a resounding Yahoo!, Google has announced and released its video search initiative called Google Video. This latest addition will give users the ability to search the content of television programs TV content providers including PBS, the NBA, Fox News, and C-SPAN, among others.

"What Google did for the web, Google Video aims to do for television," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products. "This preview release demonstrates how searching television can work today. Users can search the content of TV programs for anything, see relevant thumbnails, and discover where and when to watch matching television programs. We are working with content owners to improve this service by providing additional enhancements such as playback."

The Google Video beta enables users to search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004. If a user for instance enters a query of Tivo, the video search will return a list of corresponding television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken.

The video beta search tool also displays up to five still video images, shows when the program will be aired next and enabled specific word search within a singular program. In its statement on the beta tool, Google boldly noted, “Google Video can increase viewership by providing Google users with information on future airings of relevant programs.” Whether users will actually use the tool remains to be seen. But one can certainly surmise that Google hopes to monetize the offering in the future. Fellow search competitor Yahoo! has also launched its video search beta engine.