Google is running two major video sharing websites. The first is what most people think of when they think of videos on the web (as well as top methods for wasting countless hours that should be spent on more productive tasks): YouTube. The second is Google Videos, which many denizens of the web have never even heard of. We can assume that this conspicuous absence from public view is a big part of the problem – and just one of the many reasons Google is dropping the sharing features of their Videos site.

Google Videos has been around since January of 2005, just over a year before the company purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars. Their services were unable to compete with YouTube, and upon acquisition of their former competitor, Google stopped promoting their Google Videos service. However, they continued to allow the upload, hosting, and sharing of videos from users until May of 2010. At that point Google determined that video sharing wasn’t a top priority for this secondary site, and stopped allowing users to upload new videos.

That decision didn’t prevent users from viewing the videos that had been uploaded previously, however, and that’s what Google is now remedying. Starting on April 29th of 2011, users will no longer be able to view any media previously uploaded to Google Videos. Those who uploaded content can save their media from being shutdown alongside the Videos service by downloading the files through a new download utility provided on the video status page and re-uploading to YouTube. Content owners should act quickly, however, since download will no longer be an option after May 13th of 2011. After that date Google Videos will act as a video search site and nothing more.