Finally, Google Video is getting with the program. Yesterday, the team rolled out some much-needed social features that will almost bring the service up to par with YouTube. If you visit any video page, you'll now see options to rate, comment and "label" (tag) videos down the right hand side. There's also a new "Share this Video" link that makes it easier to post videos directly to Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal and - most importantly - MySpace.
Unfortunately, Google has decided to cram all these features into the sidebar, instead of using the length of the page - this makes them virtually unusable. As always, YouTube still has the edge. Meanwhile Grouper, Vimeo and Veoh are seeing only moderate success - perhaps because of the winner-takes-all nature of this market.
Google is also testing sponsored premium content this week, with a banner ad at the top of each video and a video ad that plays at the end.
