It was quite a weird situation when Google owned Google Video and YouTube, two similar platforms with almost the same features. Both services encouraged users to upload their videos and share them with other members of the community or any Internet user. Both services were available even if Google Video was only a beta and YouTube a final product. Both solutions caused problems for the parent company because YouTube was often criticized for copyright infringement while Google Video published full-length movies accessed by thousand of users.

A long time ago, one of the Google representatives was talking about the future of those two products saying that both of them will continue to exist side by side with a single difference: YouTube will strive to improve its continuously growing community while Google Video will be focused on the content it provides.

Recently, Google Video started indexing clips from several other video sharing services, numerous users naming it a video search engine. It was the first step that revealed a small part of the Google plans. A few days ago, the Mountain View company announced that it will close the paid store powered by Google Video so no user will be able to buy and download video content anymore.

This is somehow similar with the fate of Yahoo Photos, the photo sharing platform powered by the Sunnyvale giant Yahoo. As you might have heard, Yahoo launched Photos a long time ago just like Google and Google Video. After it acquired Flickr, a very similar service, it decided to close Photos in order to remain focused on the recently made acquisition. Just like in Google's case the search giant didn't announce that it wants to close Video. YouTube is the recently bought service with the same functions as Google Video that might replace it entirely in the near future.