Google Adds Video Search

Updated from 3:58 p.m. EDT

Google(GOOG Quote) quietly added video search to its sprawling array of search applications Thursday. The move may seem insignificant, but it is one of those flaps of the butterfly wings that can ripple into much bigger change.

As one of its many research projects, Google has been adding videos to its library from C-SPAN, PBS and several Bay Area affiliates of national networks into its search database. On Thursday, it issued a call for video uploads on its blog, raising the curtain on a kind of open-source donation of videos into its database.

On the one hand, Google's initiative could simply take all those cable-access programs that very few people want to watch and open them up to the entire world -- where very few people will want to watch. (Imagine a gallery of all those "American Idol" rejections.) ...