Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other websites. In 2009, Google Videos stopped accepting new video uploads since Google acquired YouTube, and users had the opportunity to publish their videos directly onto YouTube. On August 20, 2012, Google Videos was ultimately shut down. Thereafter, the web address video.google.com has been reused to host Google Videos search engine.