Le Danois 3.0

Google Video is only available if you’re in the US, but using Google’s own translate service you can watch it from wherever you are.
The strategy is to have the Google Translate service translate the Google video page from English to English, which Google sees as pointless and simply displays the page as it is. The trick is that it is now Google Translate that requests the video page and not you. Since Google Translate servers are located in the states it now allows you to access and view the requested video.

How-to

First of all you have to find the url of the video you want to watch. For this example we’ll use a video of John Battelle giving a talk at Google. This normal url to use for watching this video is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4381488634998231167&q=John+Battelle

If you’re in the states you’ll be able to see that video by simply following the link, but if you’re outside, you’ll have to run it through a proxy. The Google Translate service uses urls of this format:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=[url of you're video page]

So if we were to run the Battelle video through the Google Translate service we would use the following url: http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4381488634998231167&q=John+Battelle

Speeding up things with a Firefox bookmark

If you’re a user of Firefox you can even simplify this process by the use of a bookmark with a keyword. Simply create a bookmark with a keyword such as “proxy” and the “location”:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=%s

You can now simply type the following in the address bar:

proxy [url of your google video]

Example: proxy http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4381488634998231167&q=John+Battelle

Update: I have been informed that Australian and UK users have been able to watch Google Video since the launch and this post is of course only relevant for people who are from countries Google hasn’t let in yet.