Microsoft buys video search engine for $70 million

Microsoft has acquired startup video search engine VideoSurf for $70 million.

The software was created by Israeli entrepreneurs Lior Delgo, Professor Achi Brandt, Dr. Eitan Sharon and Shai Deljo.

Outside of a number of important Israeli investors, the company also had investments from former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

VideoSurf is "a visual identification video search engine" that indexes over 250 million videos from sites like YouTube, CNN and Facebook. The software is used by Warner Bros. and CBS on their web pages.

Microsoft will likely integrate the company into its Bing search in an ongoing effort to steal market share from Google.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 22 Nov 2011 17:06

llongtheD

Maybe they should have spent the money on developing a better algorithm to provide useful results. Bing is an advertisers wet dream though, you get to click on multiple links to find out information instead of just one.

If your fish seems sick, put it back in the water.

23.11.2011 00:40 #1

LordRuss

I was worried there for a second... I thought Microsoft was going to start documenting each time I looked up "huge wet hooters", but that's only if I use Bing... I detest Bing, so the likely hood of that happening & pretty slim.

Google has pretty much monopolized that market & my search criteria when I'm not anonymizing 'those' kind of searches (as it were). As for Youtube videos...? It's usually in hopes of finding old music videos back when MTV used to actually play music (yes I know, that too can be loosely defined as well, but at least there was more of it). Well... that & a stupid cat video now and again. You know, something with some explosions.

http://onlyinrussellsworld.blogspot.com

23.11.2011 10:52 #2

eLeCTR0n

Microsoft needs to figure how to do text search first before they can try video.

1.12.2011 19:17 #3

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