Sergey, Larry, Eric .... you guys are missing out. How can you hope to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" if all the wonderful presentations and talks on college and university campuses continue to be unrecorded and made available on YouTube? Google made all sorts of deals with academic libraries to scan and serve books, why aren't you doing the same with presentation capture?

Here's the idea. Google buy or partner with a lecture capture vendor - there are plenty to choose from. Make available the lecture capture equipment, cameras, software and training on campuses - free of charge. Maybe wire a few rooms or classrooms with presentation capture appliances. In exchange for the equipment and the software campuses agree to record and publish as many talks as possible to the Talks@Google and YouTube/EDU sites. Of course, campuses could also put their talks on their own institution's channel.

This seems like a win win.

Google gets an amazing new source of high quality video content. This content seems well worth the cost of the lecture capture equipment and software. Recorded and shared content might be guest lectures, campus conferences or symposiums, or even courses where the professor wants the class published.

Schools get free presentation capture equipment, software and training. They can re-purpose this equipment for any task they wish, they are not obligated to publish the captured presentations to YouTube, and they retain the original file. Colleges and universities enjoy a very cost effective method to share their intellectual life with prospective students, alumni and life long learners.

What do you think? I'm reading Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta, so Google is much on my brain.