We mentioned in February that Google was running a test of YouTube and Google Video flash players within the Google search results themselves: when a video forms part of the results, there's a small plus sign next to the result that lets you view the clip in an embedded player without leaving the results page. They were only testing this for YouTube and Google Video, however, which seemed to exclude the other video providers.
Now we know that Google does plan to provide "rich results" for all the video sites, as stated by Marissa Mayer when touting Google's Universal Search, which rolled out this week (Universal Search basically blends all the search results from Google's vertical searches into the main search set). In fact, the Google Video and YouTube integration is already live.
Meanwhile, someone in the Google Blogoscoped forum spotted the first sign of external videos creeping in over at Google Video: a search for "Rat Monster Joke" returns a result from YouTube competitor Metacafe. What's odd, however, is that the Flash player below the result isn't from Metacafe - it's a Google Video player, streaming the video form Google's servers. All the links however, including the one on the player, go to Metacafe. Is this just temporary or permanent? And is it legal to repurpose content from another site in your own player?