Iconic Flip Video almost became Google’s first camera, emails show

Before Android, before iPhone, and before GoPro became a well-known brand, the Flip Video camcorder took the world by storm, allowing millions to record digital home videos with one hand and easily save, share and upload them to a nascent YouTube, thanks to an iconic drop-down USB port.

What you probably didn’t know: Flip Video was almost a Google-branded camera, internal Google emails revealed by the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. It would have been Google’s first camera and perhaps also the first piece of hardware with the Google brand.

What we know

In January 2006, a year and a half before the first Flip Video went on sale, Google Video product manager Peter Chane tried to convince colleagues that they needed to come to an agreement to convert Google Video. at the leading video hosting partner for an upcoming Pure Digital camera.

But in February, the offering had apparently evolved. Now Pure Digital was apparently interested in turning an upcoming device into a “Google-branded camera”, suggesting that that particular option could double or quadruple the amount of videos uploaded:

While it’s fun to think of Pure Digital as “the company that makes single-use and disposable video cameras,” that was true. In 2005, Flip Video’s predecessor launched as a $ 29.99 disposable digital camera. You had to return it to CVS and pay $ 12.99 for employees to burn videos to DVD for you.

Here is a photographic proof:

Photo by Tim Boyle / Getty Images

But Google Video director Jennifer Feikin had a different idea: Google should buy YouTube instead.

And although colleagues like Hunter Walk were a little skeptical about YouTube: “We are focused on videos that have a broad public good, rather than hosting everyone’s personal video content” is a quote for the ages: we know that is exactly what Google did months later in October 2006.

Pure Digital technically introduced the USB-equipped camera in May 2006, months before the deal, but relaunched the camera in 2007 as the “Flip Video” with strong ties to Google’s new YouTube from the start. Then smartphones took off, Cisco bought Flip, and the camera brand died an ignominious one in 2011. Google didn’t have much luck trying to revive the idea in 2018 with the unfortunate Google Clips, as intriguing as its artificial intelligence. intelligence sounded.

By the way, this is what GoPro looked like in 2006.

You can read Google’s full, albeit slightly redacted, email thread in our embedded Scribd below.