While promoting a new AOL-sponsored video search portal, Truveo.com, a post last Thursday at The New York Time's Bits blog indirectly raised a crucial question:  as content grows within online video sharing and repository sites, and more video search sites enter the fray, how easy will it be to find the videos that you are looking for? And where will you go to look for it?

What I feel is an integral aspect of what will decide this is branding. There is only one clear heavyweight contender in this field at the moment – YouTube. And until recently, most video sharing sites have stuck to mimicking the YouTube model. YouTube has become the world's default online video database–just about anything that you can think of can be found within it. And if what you're looking for is not there yet, it will find its way there–regardless of who the author may be or who holds the rights to the footage.

Mass media, and the public, have also embraced and adopted the YouTube "brand" – this must have been in the minds over at Google when it bought the start-up last fall. Google has since played it smart by leveraging the YouTube "brand" for what it is, a searchable and sharable video database, while focusing on promoting the site as being "Powered by Google" technology. Surely there are some long-term video search engine plans up Mountain View's sleeves. For example, Google just shut down its paid video service – what will become of the Google Video portal, now with YouTube firmly established and free video content becoming commonplace?

However, even Google has yet to get the video search thing right yet – and neither has anyone else, for that matter. A lot of this may have to do with the different categories of video content out there.  The problem in anticipating an all-encompassing video over all networks is that there is a clear divide between amateur and professional outlets.

Currently, the largest difference in online video content is between entertainment-based portals and journalism portals. Yahoo!'s news video portal is organizing assets and information very well, but strangely their main video portal sorely lacks the same focus. CNN re-branded their website earlier in the summer, adding web video clippings to "breaking news" content, yet each clip is taken straight form archived CNN broadcasts. This produces a very different organizational hierarchy (and message) than, say, Current.tv, where news pieces are user produced.

So where will these to two areas meet? The hype machine is in gear for the next potential behemoth – NBC and Fox are partnering to create their own video sharing service, one that has gained some serious backing, and which is now the latest project to be dubbed the "YouTube Killer".

It may be too early to influence or persuade the public on "the one" video search engine, as it may be the largest factor to take into consideration in the long view of Internet video distribution. The battle of who will dominate the concept of sharable video media seems to have a clear winner, but the war to control who effectively locates video on the web has only begun, and it can't be associated, at least at this time, to one entity.