• LA Times, Tuesday, January 17, 2006 10 AM

In California these days, the ability to bridge the gap between Hollywood and Silicon Valley has become a very useful skill to have now that the Web's major players are vying for control of the broadband video market. The Los Angeles Times profiles Jennifer Feikin, the woman spearheading the broadband effort from Google. Feikin speaks the disparate languages of Hollywood and computer engineers on behalf of the search giant, which makes her "hugely valuable" as the Internet changes the way people consume media. In fact, it was Feikin, an employee at Google since 2002, who lobbied hard for Google to move into video distribution. Instead of crawling the Web for video clips to add to an index, Google began recording TV shows and indexing the close captioning text broadcasters provide for the hard of hearing. But Feikin realized that Google Video would never get anywhere without content partners; she recently signed a few dozen in response, including the National Basketball Association and CBS. Google Video is also open to anyone who wants to publish video content--the idea being to turn Google Video into an open marketplace for buying and selling videos. So far, the critics are far from impressed with the content on display at Google Video--meaning Feikin has a lot of work to do--but, as is its custom, Google has no problem launching a less-than half-baked product so that users can respond to its beta products as the company continues working on them.

Read the whole story at LA Times »