Google Video Player?

There's a zdnet article that seems to indicate that Google may be close to releasing a standalone video player. Currently videos.google.com uses a plugin that's called google video viewer. The above article gives some interesting information and a good bit of speculation. The speculation is that they will release vlc (video lan client) in a modified form to allow pay-per-view video.

They have the distribution capabilities certainly - all the dark fiber they own and the "google cubes" that were mentioned sometime back that were basically datacenter's in a trailer that could be "plopped" at peering points around the world. The rumors of the Google PC seem to have been denied at this point, but something is expected to be announced at CES. Maybe they are ramping up for a big pay-per-view launch. Maybe even something big enough to include big retailers in some (the same meetings that spurred the google pc rumor).???

Who knows, just speculating. We'll find out soon enough, but I am pretty sure we'll see a video player from Google in the not too distant future.