Yesterday John Battelle posted that Google would take the wraps off the next evolutionary step of Google Video today. Nothing looks different as of this entry, but Battelle "confirms" that Google will unveil the uploaded videos it has been soliciting since April, and also introduce its own in-browser for viewing them. If true, this is significant news in two main ways. First, Google Video will finally begin living up to its name—currently (and bizarrely) it searches closed-captioning TV transcripts. Second, the viewing plug-in will stake claim to ground now occupied primarily by Microsoft, RealNetworks, and Macromedia. What we don't know until seeing the new service launched is whether Google has also struck agreements authorizing it to display moving video of the TV program clips whose transcripts is now crawls.
