movie rentals

You probably remember Google Video, the search giant’s free video sharing site? It launched on January 25, 2005, but Google discontinued the ability to upload videos four years later following the YouTube acquisition on October 9, 2006. The company has re-branded the service as Google Videos and made it a search silo. It looks Google is now prepping a dedicated smartphone app dubbed Google Videos, reports the Android Central blog. This one has nothing to do with user-created videos – for that purpose, Google provides YouTube apps for various smartphone flavors.

According to tipsters who spotted the Google Videos app briefly in Android Market (it’s gone now), the software is basically a pretty front-end to Google’s upcoming movie rental service which was announced back in May at Google I/O 2011. Google said movie rentals would first roll out on the Xoom tablet and promised support for more devices, including Android 2.2 smartphones. Movies can be rented on Android Market starting at $1.99 and are available for offline viewing and across all Android devices and computers tied to the same Google Account. Check out the Google Videos app running on a Nexus S in the below clip.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaOhLpsoCA0]

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The YouTube team announced via a blog post that American users will be able to rent three thousand movie titles on the popular video sharing site, paying via the Google Checkout billing system. Like on iTunes, some releases will come with additional content such as movie reviews, extras and other goodies. The team also shared a couple of eyebrow-raising stats concerning service metrics.

We’re spending 15 minutes a day watching YouTube clips to the tune of two billion views a day. For comparison, average users spend five hours a day watching the old-school tube, but Google thinks “that’s going to change”. More impressive than this is the fact that YouTube is now available on 350 million devices.

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