Saturday, June 14, 2014

Webdriver Torso videos are from Google


Just the other day I was sharing some of the Internet biggest mysteries and talking about the weird Webdriver Torso videos on YouTube, and now... we finally know what's it all about.

If you never heard of Webdriver Torso, it's a YouTube channel with thousands of weird 11 second video clips with colored block and strange tones. Theories about what it might be quickly spread: aliens, mind control experiments... the works!

But now we get to know what's the purpose of these strange videos, and the answer comes from Google itself, that even added a small easter egg should you search for it on Google or on YouTube:



This a Google channel that is used to assess YouTube compression system, to make sure everything is working as it should, with automated tools that will compare the original video with the compressed YouTube video. Sure, they could have made it private... but who would guess a strange channel would become so popular?

Google even gave a final rick-roll answer with a matching Webdriver Torso video.
"We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality,
and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality.
That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso."


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