SAN FRANCISCO — Search-engine rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will open a new front in their Internet battle today when they plan to unveil dueling efforts to let users hunt through the content of television shows.
Google Video will let people look for text in the closed-captioning of television shows on PBS, C-SPAN, Fox News, ABC and other channels. Google has been recording thousands of hours of programming with its own equipment and hopes to eventually let people watch the content through Google Video.
Yahoo Video Search, which has been available in an experimental form since last month, scours the Web for video clips. And Yahoo plans to announce today that its video search engine will soon include news clips from Bloomberg and the BBC that are indexed by closed-captioning.
Although it's unclear how these efforts -- and others pursued by smaller players in the online world -- will fare, many say video searches could provide an entirely new way for people to find, and view, television programming.
"Just think of the number of hits these folks from Google get every day," said Brian Lamb, founder and chief executive of C-SPAN, one channel participating in Google Video. "We're not really sure where they're going to go with this, but we're all ears."
Yahoo and Google have taken very different approaches.
Yahoo, which provides a wide array of services on its website, offers people the ability to search for links to videos posted on the Internet and has made some video content, including music videos and film trailers, available on Yahoo.com. Yahoo also offers ways for publishers to submit their videos for inclusion.
As for Google Video, it will start small, as did Google Print, an effort launched last year to digitize books and make them available on the Web.
The two services together highlight the company's drive to put more of the world online, allowing Web surfers to eventually "Google" almost any kind of information as easily as a Web page.
Google's search service works by archiving the closed-captioning text, which broadcasters provide for the deaf. Users can read excerpts from shows that turn up in a search, see still images and find out when the program will air again.
Google Video won't play video clips -- yet. By initially taking a conservative approach with the service, analysts said, Google appears to be showing off what's possible in video search while trying to avoid scaring television executives who fear that the Internet will siphon away viewers.
