Friday, November 03, 2006

NHL on Google


The wait is over. The National Hockey League (NHL) has paved the road for professional sports' entrance into open-access. Understandably, there will be skeptics who cringe at the thought of a corporate entertainment giant taking a plunge into the online environment, and making a profit at the same time. But the NHL has just made an agreement with Google Videos which allows entire broadcasts to be online. Hence, classics such as the Vancouver Canucks-New York Rangers' Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals can be seen in its entirety, or games that you missed from yesterday can be replayed at a click of a mouse.

But the NHL is making a bold move. By putting its games online, it has unwittingly joined the realm of open-access, which includes among other things, "open collaboration, open authoring, open platforming, and open searching for everyone." Whether this hurts its NHL Network cable broadcasts remains to be seen. (They are live events, compared to Google Video's 4 hour tape-delay). As a sports fan, this is an unbelievable day. As a proponent of Web 2.0, I am ecstatic. The champagne is flowing endlessly. Let the games begin!

2 comments:

Dean Giustini said...

Smart business move on the part of NHL. Google is showing itself worthy of the Hart Trophy for search engines - or, does wealth beget more wealth?

Today it was Google booksearch helping to raise profits for Amazon.

Money makes money.

Dean

Anonymous said...

I find it fascinating that Google appears to be making money while having *fun*. What they are doing appears to be helping *users* AND businesses.

We don't hear too much negative news or conspiracy theories regarding Google as we do with Microsoft.