Video search site Blinkx to power Microsoft

Video search website Blinkx.tv on Monday announced that it has licensed its video search technology to Microsoft for use in some parts of MSN websites and Live.com, media reports said.

"We will be the single biggest video search engine on the Web," said Blinkx co-founder Suranga Chandratillake.

Instead of a cut of advertising revenue, Microsoft has agreed to pay Blinkx an outright licensing fee based on how much use visitors to Microsoft websites make of the Blinkx search system, said Chandratillake.

The agreement allows Microsoft's multimedia and online products to "have the option to integrate Blinkx services if their customers request such a service," according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

San Francisco-based Blinkx.tv employs voice recognition technology to search the audio portion of online videos, which differs from that used to search much of the Internet.

The announcement came on the same day when Google said it has acquired video-sharing website YouTube for 1.65 billion U.S. dollars in stock.

However, unlike YouTube or Google, Blinkx stores search information on videos, but not the videos themselves.

Blinkx already powers video search on sites ranging from AOL to ITN, Lycos and Times Online. It also indexes video from the likes of BCC, Fox, MTV, Sky News, Reuters and YouTube and makes videos on those sites searchable on Blinkx or partner sites.

To date, the company has indexed more than six million hours of audio, video, and TV programming to make it searchable. Enditem

Source:Xinhua/Agencies