Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other websites. In 2009, Google Videos stopped accepting new video uploads since Google acquired YouTube, and users had the opportunity to publish their videos directly onto YouTube. On August 20, 2012, Google Videos was ultimately shut down. Thereafter, the web address has been reused to host Google Videos search engine. Video content Google Video was geared towards providing a large archive of freely searchable videos. Besides amateur media, Internet videos, viral ads, and movie trailers, the service also aimed to distribute commercial professional media, such as televised content and movies. A number of educational discourses by Google employees were recorded and made available for viewing via Google Video. The lectures were done mainly at the employees' former universities. The topics covered Google technologies and software engineering but also include other pioneering efforts by major players in the software engineering field. On January 6, 2009, the Google Video Store launched to sell downloads through Google Video. The service launched with independent films Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks, and Waterborne, as well as content from media partners CBS, the NBA, The Charlie Rose Show, and Sony BMG. Initially, the content of a number of broadcasting companies (such as ABC, NBC, CNN) was available as free-streaming content or stills with closed captioning. In addition, the U.S. National Archive used Google Video to make historic films available online, but this project was later discontinued. Google Video also searched other non-affiliated video sites from web crawls. Sites searched by Google Video in addition to their own videos and YouTube included GoFish, ExposureRoom, Vimeo, Myspace, Biku, and Yahoo! Video. Video distribution methods Google Videos offered both free services and commercial videos, the latter controlled with digital rights management. Uploading videos Until 2009, users were able to upload videos either through the Google Video website (limited to 100 MB per file); or alternatively through the Google Video Uploader, available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. While the Video Uploader application was available as three separate downloads, the Linux version was written in Java, a cross-platform programming language, and would therefore also work on other operating systems without modifications, providing that the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is installed. This Java