No, I don’t know…but I do wonder, how many videos Google will sell in its first month? Anyone care to start a wager? Recall that when iTunes launched, Apple pretty much queered the market for secrecy: it proudly tells us when it sells it’s millionth, ten millionth, and so on, of any thing (including videos). Will Google do the same?
I’ll toss out a wager and say Google will sell less than 100,000 videos in its first month. After all, they have limited inventory, and the product is getting a slow start. No, wait, we have to be specific, to win. OK, Google will sell 95,567 videos in its first month. What do you say? If Google ever does tell us, I’ll send the winner a signed copy of my book. How great is that?
thats pretty high… id give it about 80,000.
I hear Google has spec. out to recruiters for a ‘major H’wood player’ to figure out their video strategy. My understanding is that they are looking for a ‘deal’ s/he who will drive licensing et. al.
Mr battell,
I all ready have your book…..it’s awseom….only wished you would have done more of the last chapter……great predictions…even google video!!!!
i would love a signed book…..i ‘ll even send you my copy so that you sign it ……
my answer is less than 35, 000
the reason: itunes rules this area is not because of the ipod, nor itunes success: nice interface, but rather because it is a solution. the ipod + itunes combo is easy to use, and go together like bread and butter. it easy, it fast and fast. i haven’t bought my first google vide because i have a powerbook, but have used it a lot….i even uploaded a video(search eray)!!!
don’t get me wrong….my team are google and apple. but yahoo and in this case apple has a head start in understanding service retail and consumer entratinment (pay per use services). google has to sort of forget about search and focus on ease of use. people love to window shop. itunes and yahoo allow that. google is a bit mor inconvinent for your avergae user.
that’s my two cents…..
your welcomed to visit my site…(just starting out) not going to be competition for you..lol…..i am just enjoying the game.
I would say its around 50k but google is never going to reveal the number anyway!
Assuming “sell” implies “not for free”, I bet 113,287.
We should also do a “wisdom of crowds” analysis, ala the introduction of Surowiecki’s book, once all the answers are in!
I’ll bet 65,589 if we ever get the number!
Lets say 145,000
248,000 is my guess and I promise not to buy any videos myself in order to inflate numbers.
Am already reading your book but a signed copy would be a great treat.
I am going big… 148,000.
I’ll go for 40,000 it does seem to be taken yet…
I’d be all for a higher number if it was available all around the world. People like me from overseas can’t try it even if we want to. I’m not sure there reasoning on only selling to American users, why not share it with the whole world? They already have the tax, issue sorted out for adsense. I guess there might be export restrictions/costs? Or maybe the content providers are worried about something?
My bet is 57,721.
Why? It’s the Euler constant:
0.57721566490153286060
I know Google Video’s figure must be a consumer-defined number, but (as I guess we’re not to know it) it could be very-geek figure.
Well… I’d be happier to be able to talk with you about Google Video and what is happening to Google now than to have a signed copy of your book–my “to be lend to” list is too long anyway. Wait: you blog already allows me to do this!
Isn’t Google going through an asteroid field right now? How come Yahoo difficulty to monetize ads lower GOOG market cap? What the h*ll was this clumsy video thingy about? What happened at CES? The open IM federation is closing a spiral of bad communication–but I am not expecting any video sales to help there: my bet is 61,570–none of which from me or anyone in my country, because Google Video is not accessible from our retarded third world European remote location.
twenty five thousand.
20003
Have to say I reckon 100,000 is a bit pessimistic. There are a lot of American users out there so I’ll go for double that, a nice round 200,000.
That said, I can’t personally find out how easy it is to use so I guess that could affect things. New (good) ideas + poor useability = train wreck.
35.000 but not much more in the first month!
My guess: 123321 🙂
I ‘d go with 65,556. I already got your boog, consumed it in one sitting. Fascinating read, to say the least.
Can we play this like the Price Is Right? Cause I think you’re all too high. My guess: 1.
And I should have mentioned this in the above post. Won’t some of the content providers be releasing numbers? Perhaps the NBA will indicate how many basketball games they’ve sold? That would start to give us some idea as to how many, in total, have been purchased.
I’m guessing 666,666 for obvious reasons. 🙂
There’s nothing on there I would buy as of yet. Now if they had Superbowl 32, I would be all over that.
Has anyone bought one and put it on their iPod yet? Wonder how easy that is and what the video resolution is?
The first month — hm, somehwhere between 50 and 100,000, say 72,543.
Also, I see “ads by Yahoo” to my right on this page. If my memory serves me, I have seen Google ads here in the past. Have you left Google for Yahoo?
I am going to guess NULL. I predict that Google will NOT give out the numbers for the first month of G video, and will go along with the mantra of “numbers dont matter” much like removing their search index # from the homepage. I feel that this is a valid prediction because it is a possible outcome.
I think after the business world catches up with the engineers they will release a quarterley number that will surpass all expectations. After releasing the longtail of video content into the Google video store – I predict millions of sales.
Uhh…30 days of video sales…ummm…let’s say 11,212
There’s an estimated 210 million broadband subs worldwide, 50 million of these are in the US. Since content is mostly American/in English, we can assume maybe another 50 million non-US subs who may dig the vids. Let’s also assume: 3% of these actually heard of it and tried it. Of this universe, only 5% purchase ONCE (most vids are not that pricey, and iPOD vids sold at $2 a pop). My magic number would be : 150,000 downloads.
Mr. Batelle, your book was a great read. I wouldn’t mind the honor of having a signed copy. It will sit well with my signed Neal Stephenson and Nicholas Negroponte.
Can I bid one and claim everyone else has overbid? I mean, my grandmother’s tv lineup is more appealing than the Google Video offerings.
I bet on 42,600
John Battelle, you are a funny man.
I’m going to take a guess at 47,764.
Ben
25,323 They will never tell, unless you can get them to tell you just so you can announce a winner.
I would say 177K
My prediction: 32,817.5 videos sold
John,
Enjoyed the book, it’s become required reading for all of my co-workers.
As for my prediction of videos sold in 30 days my guess would be 75,000… BUT I don’t believe they will disclose a number at this point in time, perhaps at the end of the quarter. Nice to see mpeg4 downloads for Video iPods similar to http://www.searchforvideo.com
Was disapointed to see that you can’t buy NBA downloads with a Mac.
Take care,
David Clarke
http://www.searchforvideo.com
I guess 35,500 videos sold !
My guess is 34,159
But they would never tell it if it was that low !
13,000, but they’ll never tell you because it is not an impressive #.
By suggesting 95,567 you are creating the expert-anchoring effect, as a result many (Note: not all) are suggesting answers closer to what you had suggested.
My $0.02
I’ll shoot for 95,566.
My guess is 183,463. From the traffic numbers I found, Google Video was getting around 2.5 million unique visitors a month before the store launch. The press around the launch will probably push that up to 3.5-4 million uniques for January. Even with the increased traffic, there is so much free content available and so little quality pay content that people can get a good idea of how the site works without having to plunk down $2.
68,749…though most not from repeat customers.
Does anybody know how much they selled?
I guess 53,547 videos sold *g*
hmm, I would say 10 less than how many books you have sold.
I think it’s 1 million sold downloads (works only when people register an american address and phone number when they make the first credit card purchase), 10 million free downloads (works worldwide) and 50 million streams (works wordwide, is now easy to embedd in own website).
Soon I expect Google will add the credit card security needed to accept worldwide credit card payments (worldwide credit cards work, it’s just that only a valid american adress and phone number needs to be entered..) As a swiss guy in China I use a free voicemail phone number by k7.net and find any american adress on Google. As soon as I can register with my real address and phone number I will log-in to purchases.google.com and change it. Probably google is waiting for the 3-D Secure system to launch in February, this will make worlwide authentified credit card purchase possible.
Anyways, I have bought 13 videos yet for over 50$, I think it’s awesome! The resolution is better than itunes (allthough I have not tried itunes, I hate mac and ipod).. I think Google is unique to enable independant content providers sell and distribute their videos, and to distribute the videos in high quality (allthough 480 wide pixels resolution seems to be on all the .gvi videos).
I’m interested by your book, I haven’t read it yet.. It’s been a long time since I read a real book, I just read stuff on the internet.. Can I buy your book as an ebook for my upcomming e-ink reader?
I’ve put your wager up @ Kweschun – http://kweschun.com/k/ask/665
I wager 74,438
202,202
Hi
I think a more than a million(between 1 and 2 million) videos…!
I dont know how they can sell videos that are aired public tv? Is that legal?
This is really late, but i would say 250,001 on Kobe’s 81 point night. The last one for me!