SCaN: Google TV Search

Google makes me weak in the knees. Today, they launched a beta of their new TV search service. It's actually quite simple -- they tape local broadcasts on eight channels, and index the text from closed-captioning.

Say you search for Michael Jordan. You find out the Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational Golf Tournament was last weekend, you find out that Michael Jordan liked the voice of Morpheus in the Matrix, so he had Laurence Fishburne narrate his IMAX movie. You find that Jordan is investing in a luxury condominium complex in Las Vegas.

It's that easy!

The service is VERY beta. They're only tracking eight channels, and they're the local San Francisco affiliates, at that. There's no notification feature, like Google News Alerts, yet. You can't pull live video clips down off the site, probably for copyright reasons. But it clearly has huge potential.