Google CEO Recommends Web Video For Local Businesses

Here is an extract from Wired magazines interview with Eric Schmidt CEO of Google, here is talks about the value of web video for local businesses. Here it is:-

Brin is reflecting on how he has, just possibly, resolved the major business challenge that is YouTube. “I’ve come to a very inverse view of video,” he says excitedly. “I used to think of video as entertainment. It has high production costs, so you’d produce a small number of videos but they could be entertaining – which is basically what television is. And yet, looking at YouTube, and more widely the evolution of video on the internet, it’s completely changed my mind. Because now YouTube to me is a very easy and powerful way to communicate pretty much personally might like certain types of sport – I like springboard diving, that’s an obvious thing you want to see on video. But even surprising things – I bought this Raid hard drive array for my house, and I was choosing a model, and a search popped up for a YouTube video. I watched this, I saw it was really well designed – and I bought the drives, and they’re great. I’d looked up the specs, and yet the video was very useful. Small local businesses can increasingly use video – you could easily imagine restaurants showing what they serve, people happily dining away, then you’ve got a sense of the atmosphere.

“So in my mind now, it’s really changed. Video is a perfect medium for information about very narrow specialised things.” With YouTube, no doubt, as the tollbooth.