Media staple TV Guide will soon launch its own search engine that will guide people to online video across the web, reports the Associated Press.
Instead of becoming a video channel of its own along the YouTube model, the engine will simply crawl the internet and index the video it finds. Only 60 sites will be crawled, all from TV networks or other major companies such as Google and others. TV Guide will monetize the search function by selling ads within results and licensing out the tool.
Far from being a "right now" play, TV Guide has its eyes on the future, when TV and the internet will be integrated and it can help people find video content regardless of distribution platform.
The company hopes results will be more relevant to the user based on its cross-referencing an item's metadata against its huge database of programming information. Users will be allowed to save videos to an offline application.
