YouTube has been experimenting with changes to the YouTube embedded player today. That’s the Flash-based video player that is loaded on Web sites and blogs using the embed code that is provided on YouTube pages.

Earlier today the player displayed an ugly YouTube search form that overlaid the video and it that was visible by default. Now, the search box isn’t displayed by default, but appears when your mouse hovers over the player.

I feel this search form shouldn’t be displayed at all, at least until AFTER the video is played in its entirety.

As far as I can tell the search doesn’t lead you away from the page you embedded the player on but even still it makes a significant change to the default player behavior and in some respects changes the social contract we’ve had with YouTube when we decided to host our videos on their service and use their player on our Web sites.

I feel this search box should be opt-in on existing videos as we didn’t agree to have that on our pages when we embedded the player on our Web sites.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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