People watching Google Video closely noticed a change this week in the upload area – the restrictions on uploading “pornographic or obscene” material is now just a restriction on “obscene” material. They’ve also added a “mature and adult” category to the genres and removed (I believe) a box on the initial uploading page that must be checked where the uploader certifies that the “video is not pornographic or obscene material”.
This may or may not mean Google is allowing, or preparing to allow, porn. Videos containing nudity are clearly available on the site, and many were uploaded months ago (for example, is this porn?). But nothing hardcore seems to be on the site.
Also, the box requiring uploaders to certify that content is not pornographic is still in certain areas, such as the “edit video” area of the site. And the terms and conditions still prohibit pornographic material.
It’s strange that Google is allowing classification of content as “mature and adult”, and allowing video containing nudity (which is arguably porn), but still restricting pornography through the terms and conditions and in the video edit section. Either they’re just testing the boundaries of what their users will allow, or in the middle of making changes that could allow more hardcore content. Either way, porn is big business, and I’m sure Google has thought long and hard about how to get their piece of it.
More if and when this develops, and see Google Blogoscoped for their view. Thanks for the tip Razvan.
See our profile of Pornotube, a porn specific YouTube competitor, as well.
Note: There are some statements above about Google removing the no-porn check box, etc. that I can’t confirm. If there are any hard-core users of Google Video out there that have corrections or clarifications, please let me know. Better yet, if you are a Google employee and know what the real story is, please leave a comment. 
The problem is that already a significant number of X rated websites are advertising themselves in the video section. See for example this video:
http://video.go...4&q=blowjob
and the other movies that the same user has uploaded. As I see it, if they go this way they have 2 ways to offer the content:
1. Only for users that use Google Checkout (you have to enter the credit card and that is enough for age verification). This will be usefull twice: age verification and bringing users to checkout
2. Same as Yahoo does for adult profiles: the user has to be authentificated and in the account it has to be appear that is older than 18.
Is a nasty business but as you said is BIG. I see no reason why they should not enter it. After all Yahoo! Video indexes a lot of porn content and they don’t do any age verification and I haven’t seen anyone complaining about it.
Or is just me looking for that on Yahoo….Is research I tell you. RESEARCH
Nudity is NOT necessarily sexual – it can also be artistic, sensual nudity.
Lovemaking, in Good taste, could also be mature/adult – without crossing the barriers of bad taste.
It all boils down to HOW reality is presented!
Google is made up or young-ish, creative people, who realize that it is just not realistic to paint everything of a sensuous nature with a general broad brush stroke.
They are going the EXTRA MILE to be meet the public half way provided that they show descretion.
Kudoos to Google for taking that step
I don’t think this is the place for Google to be, if you want to view/upload this stuff than there are plenty of other places to do it like PornoTube
First off, nudity is not porn. I wouldn’t call the evening news in the nude porn. I would call the evening news in the nude where the anchors are touching each other and touching each other porn.
Thinking about it, I would classify something as porn if a child has to ask what are they doing?
Why do you cover this smut? Do you enjoy porn?
I don’t know, that video I linked above is just a very soft form of porn in my opinion. They’ve blurred the lines.
It’s not a good topic. And if this is true, it will ruin google.
So Google has always made money from porn, arguably. Do a search for the word porn on Google and you’ll see loads of text ads. Click one, and Google makes a “cost per click (CPC)” fee from the advertiser. What’s different about the online video space is that Google is choosing to not just index the world’s videos but to host them. Major difference. Expect lots of lawsuits on the porn vs. adult topic, and from copyright owners that find their stuff on Google without permission. Nearly a half million people have seen my butt crack on Google. Is that porn?
http://video.go...256933733489580
Good work posting a neutral Google story.
I think this is a smart move and we’re slowly seeing the unravelling of a strategy to catch up on YouTube. The attention grabbing nature of their moves has got the Blogosphere talking, i think a more conservative approach would have spelled the end of Google video, as in the next few weeks YouTube are set to make announcements of content deals with major producers. There’s life in the old dog yet…
ah, excellent. a post about a technicality on an old website.
“(you have to enter the credit card and that is enough for age verification)”
Not quite. At age 17 I had a Visa Check Card in my name that pased any 18+ age verification system I tried on.
I Think it is not ture.
Do any of this surprise you? Did anyone really expect Google Video to be porn free?
This must be the monthly porn update. Lat month (July 11) there was another porn article – http://www.tech...h-porn-browser/.
Nice job! What’s next porncrunch.com?
It is important to note that Credit Card Verification systems were deemed useless years ago. People under 18 often have Credit Cards now.
Google takes in millions of dollars in their text ads from the Adult Industry. Neither Google or MSN accepts ads from this industry.
totally not true; nothing has changed
Right, nothing has changed. That’s how it is the first day Google Upload Program has launched. I have no idea why people dugg it to the front page, it’s nothing big. Google won’t allow porn on their website, never.
This is just a small move by google being analysed in a 1000 different ways by bloggers.
Mike, follow the TOS , I cut it here
Its a battle of VideoSpace in occurance.. follow the google Blogoscoped forum and you may see some insight
I wrote the original google hidden categories article which included the mature adult thing. Nothing has changed except some douches misinforming post became #1 in digg yesterday, and bloggers wanted to distribute the shock news.
The checkbox required to be clicked before submitting:
” I certify that this video is not pornographic or obscene material”
IT IS STILL THERE
My Rebuttal
http://www.jimm...0n_223_2006.php
Popular RSS feed, which has felacio gay pr0n thanks to many people submitting this missinformation
http://video.go...&output=rss
So, Google is thinking “long and hard about how to get their piece of it?”
You said it, Mike. It figures. And that’s why I read TC every day.
Thinking out of the box…
Cheers!
YES, it should not be a fault/guilty to researh on a art.
What a shocker (no pun intended) – another TechCrunch porn post.
The biggest challenge to Google having porn, or even nudity in a “mainstream” film will undoubtably be the new 2257 regulations that Bush recently signed into law.
New 2257 regs enacted – http://www.xbiz...40&id=16280 (NSFW – well your work anyway
John – porn will not ruin gogole, in fact it is one of the main uses of google, and google’s image search, as well as yahoo and others I might add.
Taz – I think Porncrunch is an excellent idea, I would help co-author it
Then you could rebrand another site as prude crunch, or kid crunch.
Chris – MSN and others do make money from the adult industry; you are mistaken. MSN used to shlep it off onto overture or nightsearch or some crap like that, now it’s a waste of money for text ads bought there, but if you search for sex toys you will see ads from adult companies as do most others. If they returned no results for porn or adult sites you would see thier overall numbers take a huge dive, and thus the value of thier engine as a whole would be hurt as well. So it is easy to see that those numbers make them money, and a lot of those numbers come from adult searchers finding what they are looking for.
Mike, I love you man. After clicking on the link to the video above, my google search bar displayed a search for “genre:mature_adult”, which i didn’t discover until my wife was so kind to point that out to me
It took me a “little bit” of effort to explain the situation, but we are again on speaking terms 
(btw, she liked the video)
On a related note, since the AOL affair (liked your reporting on that) i realize now that google forever has a record that says that i searched for mature content while having my coffee on a sunny sunday morning. I wonder who and when is going to use that against me????
Cheers,
Jack
Mike’s vendetta against Google continues…
Funny how he never calls out other large companies for similar offerings.
#26,
Maybe because the other large companies you are talking about never were so arrogant to suggest that others are evil?
Google’s arrogant claim “don’t be evil” is slowly but surely turning against them.
Google have had porn indexed in their search engine since day one…
Search using porn keywords and you’ll see tons of pornographic sites in the search results…same in image search.
However I wouldn’t like to see porn in google video.
Google: Don’t be evil.
Porn aint bad.
IMHO, porn is the foundation of e-business……Google can’t go against it.
Porn isn’t evil. Anti-sex puritanism is.
In either case, I wouldn’t expect Google to get into hardcore porn. It’s a legal and PR mindfield I don’t see why they’d want to get into.
However, there’s plenty of non-porn “mature and adult” content I could see that they *would* want to get into. R rated hollywood movies, for instance. Lots of movies have nudity, violence, naughty language, etc. that would infuriate the religious right if “children might see”.
Next up : http://www.sexcrunch.xxx
If they wanted porn $ they would let you use Adwords on porn pages, but that’s against Adwords T&Cs
Nudity is not porn. Check the dictionary. And that video of women in Maldives? Come on, give me a break. When I go to the beach and see topless or nude women (or men) I am not watching porn.
ha ha Google will sell porn movie
I reckon it’s time to buy more Google shares 
@ maht : Zdnet has more info on the adword stuff
Let me just make clear that Google has not innovated since 1996, when its search was developed. Let’s see what they’ve done since:
Google Pack blows (WTF?)
Google Video blows (Killed by a 3-person garage startup from San Mateo)
Google Talk blows (I don’t know anyone who uses it)
Google Base blows (WTF?? Was this one of their April Fools jokes?)
Google Finance blows
Google Spreadsheets blows
Froogle blows (They killed it, axed from the front page)
Gmail.. ok not bad. Wow. WEB EMAIL! Yay! WOW that has never been done!
Note that all of the above suck and none are market leaders.
Google: stick with search, stop releasing failed products.
If YouTube were to be sold today what would the price be? Oddly I think Google moving into its space and also Google providing search services for MySpace this could drive up the price of YouTube with established players not wanting to put shut out of this market.
Does Google get tatty?
I made a small cartoon:
http://geekandp...-virginity.html
Bye,
Oliver
I certainly hope Google video allows porn. It seems just strange to me how much this new technological freedom-of-speech world excludes and marginalises overt sexuality. I regard this as unhealthy.
It’s all about eyeballs. How do you think Guba got deals with Warner and Sony? Guba was built on porn.
If Google wants to taste of the video ad pie they are going to need to have an audience and for sure Google Video needs a kickstart. Rule 1 of business; sex sells.
Well, it is hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, there is still the checkbox that certifies that a video is neither pornographic nor obscene. On the other hand, a quick check of videos listed in Google’s Mature Adult category shows some videos that some individuals might well find pornographic, if not obscene. I suppose much of this depends on the point of view of the observer (everyone’s definition of pornography and obscenity varies), but I would be very surprised if Google would ever allow anything too hardcore.
It is an abomination!
I bet you’ve seen this before, but in case you didn’t or don’t remember:
http://www.pornotube.com/
… people keep pushing the limit even further.
By the way, great blog, ;]
This decision affects more than just them. We decided that Searchles would automatically embed videos from Google and Youtube that people bookmark, and we based this decision on the porn policing that goes on in those networks. Unfortunately, we need to reevaluate. There may be others that have made similar decisions.
GoFish seems to be taking the monetization around user gen video in a new direction. They have launched a program that is modeled after reality TV, getting users to create content specifically around a reality show concept – which means all this user gen content is channeled around a specific topic area. It’s certainly a concept that has worked well on TV – dating. It’s called America’s Dream Date. People are submitting videos to the contest, ranking and commenting on one another all with the hopes of being one of the finalists who will then be narrowed down entirely by the audience to one guy and one girl and get sent on a “dream date” together in Paris. They have wrapped a sponsor around it and are showing very clearly how a brand can own the show – much the way we see this now happening with brand and product placements within reality on TV. This could be the only way that real media based monetization in the user gen video space happens.
Mike said: “video containing nudity (which is arguably porn)”
Not sure I’d agree with that. In fact, I know I wouldn’t.
But thanks for the heads up on the changes… should be interesting to see how it plays out in the media especially.
who cares if google permits porn? no one said anyone has to look at it if they dont want to.
besides, the adult industry brings in more money than the film/entertainment industry; guess porn sells/makes better movies.
I think we will c, but if google has to find a good way to watch if the persons are adult, maybe they so catch information of their viewers ( personals ) that they can use them if they want.
sorry for bad english
Regards Ben from germany