couple of days ago, I used Google's 'Desktop Uploader' to upload a video of Stephen Harper's Sep 25 speech at the CFR (The Council on Foreign Relations).

The speech contained some interesting insight about Mr.Harper's views on certain subjects like climate change, North American Prosperity & Security,  and I figured that others might like to see the video as well... especially with Canada on the verge of an upcoming federal election.

The video uploaded just fine.

I logged into my Google account to see if the video had been processed and saw that it wasn't even on the list of my 'uploaded videos'.

I didn't think much of it.
Figured, its a large file, and it probably takes a while to process.

A day later, I logged into my Google account and noticed that the file had indeed been uploaded and listed in my videos.

Great! I clicked on the link to see the video live online and noticed that the length of the file had been trimmed from over 1 hour to some 3 minutes and change.


Well, I thought that either the file hadn't uploaded correctly or Google's crack team of investigative video analysts had decided that this was either HIGHLY copyrighted material (not copyrighted enough though not to warrant 3 minutes on Googles server); Stephen Harper's speech at the CFR contained HIGHLY classified para-military inter-governmental secrets that the unimaginative public couldn't possibly understand; or that his speech was so freakin boring that they didn't want to waste Googles precious server space on Mr. Harper.

I was a little pissed, but hey, 3 minutes is better than nothing...

Another day passed, and I was curious to see how many views, if any, that the video had. I don't remember the exact number but it was around 100. Not much, but at least the video was now in circulation.

Fast forward to today -  a couple of days later.

I log into my Google account to check the stats on some other videos that I've uploaded, clicked on the Stephen Harper video link only to encounter Google's dreaded "We're sorry, but this video may not be available." page!

What? I couldn't figure it out.

Why would Google bother clipping 95% of a video, then have it online for a couple of days only to then take it down completely?

I'm stumped...

For those of you who are interested in viewing Harper's speech at the CFR you can see the full speech here - at the CFR's own website!
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UPDATE: 3 days later the video was reinstated!

Like Roseanne Roseannadanna  of SNL fame used to say after delivering a long diatribe only to be shown that she misunderstood the topic, "ummm...never mind"
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