Google has begun providing closed captions for selected videos in its Google Video database, internetnews.com has learned.

The service went live last night, a Google spokesperson confirmed.

The videos with close captioning range from content produced by Nova to user-created media, typical to Web 2.0's video platforms.

Now the hearing impaired can enjoy the intricacies of such titles as "motocross crash at greenvalleys extreme park."

The measure to increase accessibility to Google content comes a little more than a month after the company announced Google Accessible Search, a way for the visually impaired to find Web sites friendly to their needs.

But the service could also provide Google some differentiation from rivals amid an explosion of video over the Web, not to mention user-generated video sites.

Read more: internetnews.com