A new video for a new Google product is making the rounds, and it’s a good time for some thoughts on how well Google uses online video to its advantage.

The video in case is for Hotpot (also a sponsored trending topic on Twitter):

Google is maybe one of the best companies using online video today. Every time they launch a new product they release a new video, like the example above.

Or when Google Buzz was launched (done by member JR Canest!):

This one got 2.3 million views.

But not just new products – even new features on old products also get the video treatment, like for instance when Android got voice search:

And not only for the US. Here’s a video for Google Crome in Japan:

And there are so many more examples! Google’s Youtube channel alone sports 1297 videos, and with +15 million views total – and if we go to the various brands (Mobile channel, Android, etc), then it grows exponentially.

It should be no surprise, of course – they realized early on that online video was going to make a big dent, otherwise they wouldn’t have spent those 1.65 billion dollars in 2006 buying Youtube. They understood the opportunity and have been using it to the full.

Now you may argue than other companies might not have the budget Google has to be spending in every new product or feature they put out. True. But with the price of going to an agency, they can have made several videos in video crowdsourcing services (like Wooshii and the like, wink wink), and thus even have videos make for different target segments, etc, the potential is immense and companies can be creative about it.

And Google… well we sure will be looking forward to more of their videos :)