Google Video Player

Google Video Player was another way to view Google videos; it ran on Windows and Mac OS X. The Google Video Player played back files in Google's own Google Video File (.gvi) media format and supported playlists in "Google Video Pointer" (.gvp) format. When users downloaded to their computers, the resulting file used to be a small .gvp (pointer) file rather than a .gvi file. When run, the .gvp file would download a .gvi (movie) file to the user's default directory.

Google Video Player was discontinued on August 17, 2007. The option to download videos in GVI format was also removed, the only format available being MP4 format.

While early versions of Google's in-browser video player code were based on the open source VLC Media Player, the last version of Google Video Player was not based on VLC, according to its readme file. However, it did include the OpenSSL cryptographic toolkit and some libraries from the Qt widget toolkit.

Google Videos and the Google Video Player were ultimately phased out due to Google's acquisition of YouTube.