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Google Announces 'Google Movies'
NW writes "Over at the official Google Blog, a new Google feature was announced - Google Movies. When using the 'movie:' operator in Google, it brings up movie reviews. At the first glance it looks like a custom search across movie review sites. There are also movie 'home pages' like this one which aggregate all reviews AND calculate the total score based on the number of stars. It looks like something similar to Google News - parsing all the reviews and it remains to be seen whether it will be expanded to something like IMDB. There is also no ads, probably for the same reason as Google News. The bottom of the page states 'The selection and placement of reviews on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page.'"
You can get all sorts of information on movies from Booble. http://www.booble.com/
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
"No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page."
You know, just in case people thought that they'd holf movie critics hostage in order to promote them...
If I type "movie:Lord of the Rings type=torrent" will it bring up links to the torrents along with the reviews?
...why isn't this being presented as a Google Reviews service, reviewing anything and everything? Now THAT would become a cultural phenomenon.
And I quote, "Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to you. For now."
Here's hoping for the best with all of their future plans!
What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.
And the worldest highest concentration of self-appointed experts who do nothing but criticize the efforts of others in a vain attempt to build self-esteem!
There - ARE - also no ads...?
http://www.freepokerchipset.info
This is another step in a long chain of smart moves by Google. They have already proven they can create technical masterpieces. But where this (and Google News, and Froogle, etc.) really shines is in the practical usability department. There are search engines out there that will let you search using wildcards and all sorts of other features that are neat from a technical point of view. But I will use Google Movies a whole lot more than wildcards - because I like movies. And I bet a lot of other people will use it for the same reason.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
am i the only one that feels like google is trying to get it's hands in too many pies? wasn't the best part of the search engine that it did one thing simply and well. it seems that apple is being crucified for trying to branch out a bit with the ipod photo and shuffle, yet google gets deified for everything it touches.
It will not beat IMDb. Maybe Google will try to buy it soon and turn it into GMDb (Google Movie Database).
Ahh, now the interesting question here is whether you meant to say "I'm willing to bet someone will pay something for this algorithm to favour them" or "I'm willing to bed someone who will pay something for this algorithm to favour them."
Freudian slip? YOU MAKE THE CALL!
Cool Google Movies , is very interesting !
SirXavier
This is exactly what http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ does. I'm not sure if its an automated process on their end or not but it is functionally identical and in an easier to access format for current movies.
A very worthwhile site.
Hopefully this turns out to be better than Metacritic. Once google expands to other media such as books and games, metacritic will be in trouble.
However, I found the scores from metacritic did not reflect how I would score it at all. Then again, reviews seldom do.
You have been warned; use your discretion.
Yet Another USA-Only Google Service.
which is fine since they have to start somewhere, but why not mention this or put it in the USA category so most of the world doesn't need to waste its time with another of Google's (so far) unfulfilled promises?
I got a chuckle out of the #1 entry for a Google Search for "movies:christmas lights"
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
That is my best movie link at the moment, moviename filetype:torrent and volla, you can download anything. I don't think I'll use the movie: link much, though, I love IMDB and I think I'll stick with that. ;)
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Aggregates reviews for movies/games/dvds/books/etc. and is one of the few sites that isn't blocked by my companies firewall...
Everything is placed on a 0-100 scale so its easy to compare.
Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to > you. For now. But that's the feature I need most!
Guess I'll wait until it's out of beta...
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
I'm willing to bed anyone, and they don't have to pay something to favour them.
Searching for movie:Titanic yields this short message:
"No movie showtimes or reviews were found for Titanic."
Yes, in english and all, strangely enough. If Google can display a message in english, what's the deal about not being able to show reviews in english? And even if you wouldn't *understand* english, surely you'd still understand what "3.8 / 5" meant. Or what 4 stars of 5 meant.
So I have to wonder why the service is only semi-enabled for international Google?
It doesn't even list reviews for movie:Fucking Åmål when searched in swedish Google, even if it's a swedish movie.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This is Slashdot; he's willing to bed anyone. The more algorithms, the better.
No actors, poor ratings. But then again, who would use it just for the ratings?
movie: ZIP
Brings up showtimes at local theaters... Goodbye moviefone hello google
The problem that I foresee with this is timeliness. If you search for Sideways you don't get any results! I'll stick with Rotten Tomatoes.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
I really don't think the imdb folks would sell anyways.
On a related note I just wish the folks at zap2it licensed IMDB's scores (rather than the usual 4 stars which often are completely bogus) on my linux box I use freeguide + tv_imdb to achieve the integration but it's too slow (freeguide is VERY slow, and it takes a while to do the tv_imdb pass, and no I don't keep my box on 24/7 so I can't cron it at 2am) and on my (much faster) win32 gaming box I haven't found any TV listings app that I can use the same way (currently running freeguide which, again, is way slow despite the computer being an a64-3500+: this is one of the cases I wish somebody wrote a native win32 app for this)
-- the cake is a lie
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q= movie%3Achristmas+lights/
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Huh? Try movie:christmas lights next time? :-) (no 's' in movies)
I mean, if you're trying to look for movies with this new feature.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...that this service will weed out the following movie types, since doing reviews on these are pretty pointless anyway:
- Ben Affleck movies
- anything with "Spy" and "Kids" in the title
- all anime movies based on children's playing cards
- all new Star Trek movies involving Berman or Braga in the production
- movies dealing with George W. or Jesus Christ
- sequels to movies where characters are played by different actors/actresses
- chick flicks (so my wife won't find a good one to force me into)
IronChefMorimoto
But COULD wee harm them? At least let us use them a bit.
Bunch a blowhards.
"val kilmer popcorn" brings up Real Genius
"mike and the bots" brings up MST3k - as the second hit (apparently The Phantom was crying out to be MSTed)
Of course, Rotten Tomatoes picks an exemplary or pithy line from the review to quote, whereas google simply takes the first line of the review, or the line containing your search term. The convenience of having it built into google is seductive, though.
For the local drive in it only picks out (2nd listing) the first movie for each screen that night.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
If and when I want reviews on a movie, this is the best review aggregator site I have found so far:
MRQE
it can't automatically filter out reviewers whose taste :) since the numbers of stars they
doesn't agree with mine
would use to rate a movie are irrelevant to me.
Like any self-respecting user of Google, I choose to change my language in the preferences to my native language, which is Hacker.
While everything else one the site appears to work properly with this language setting, 'movie:' searches do not.
Not even searching for movies like Hackers returns any results.
Hopefully this terrible oversight will be fixed soon.
#2
And the final Proof
Doesn't this just encourage the movie industry to game the Google system and post fake good reviews for their movies? I mean, I know the industry already does this, but now they're encouraged to spam the Intarweb with more and more shill reviews to get their star rating up on Google.
Hmm, this looks farily nice, when it finds the movie that you are looking for.I particularly like that it works well for searching for the name of a particular actor. The biggest problem I've found when playing around with it is that it doesn't seem to offer spelling suggestions,for example if you type "movie:Shawn of the Dead" it returns no results, but simply running a google search for "Shawn of the Dead" the first result is for the actual title "Shaun of the Dead". There also doesn't seem to be any sort of spell checking, so for example you get lots of results for "movie:Vin Diesel" but no results or spelling suggestions for "movie:Vin Diesal". (you may now engage in making fun of my taste in movies and actors).
The sort by rating function is nice, I tried typing "movie:2005" and sorted by rating to get a list of top rated movies of 2005.
Another example of strangeness I've found is that for current movies, it gives you a chance to search for show times, but does not show the results for the movie until after you search for show times, for example, I entered "movie:Hitch" and had to enter my zip code to search for show times, and on THAT results page it gave me the reviews results.
Overall, good idea google, but it does still need some work, I think I'll stick with imdb for now.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I won't complain about famous reviewers like Roger Ebert getting top listing (he always does on IMDB under "external reviews"), but it seems strange that there are so many reviews from Boxoffice Online, Epinions.com, and rec.arts.movies.reviews. And yet, no where is a smaller independent reviewer like http://www.filmguru.net/ mentioned. What's up with that?
(Shameless plug)
--FilmGuruthat they are only doing English movies. Where are the french movies damnit! we wont sit idly by while google continues to push it anglo-centric agenda on the world!
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I can see them working, but it's not the best system. Rotten Tomatoes is still far superior for movie review comparisons, IMO.
Final note: don't try "Movie:" (proper use is no caps). This is case-sensitive.
You should copywright that idea. But, how do I watch google on my tv? The channels only go up to 99, not to a googol, then it starts at 2 again. Do I need a new tv? At any rate, if properly marketed, that could be worth millions.
"But theres things mightier than a sword, and there are things mightier than pens. Guns and rap." - CrazyJim1
Uhhuh. That'd also cost real money but, then again, Google has a wash of capital. Anyway... What does this have to do with anything? You didn't read the article, did you.
One thing I think would be appropriate for Google to do would be to interpret the reviews and come up with a synopsis beyond average ratings. For instance, "20% of reviewers thought the movie is hilarious but 40% of reviewers thought it is boring".
Another thing they can do is link other related movies, not just by actors, but by "if you liked X you'll like Y". And even recommend new movies based on how you rate movies on their site.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
Google == command line Yahoo.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I did a search for Manos. I didn't get what I was looking for. Maybe the crawlers need to run a little longer.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
The same thing happens for "Ray" and "Million Dollar Baby". The interesting part is that it clearly knows that these are movies, because it offers to find nearby theatres. If you do a search for a nonsense word or phrase, you don't get the same offer.
So why is it suppressing reviews of currently playing movies? It's enough to make one speculate about Hollywood pressure, but I'm sure there's a more innocent explanation.
What I'd like to know is how people can actually give this film more than 2 stars. Beautiful sets but the film is mostly garbage.
On IMDB you can see the 3.2/10 rating but have to click on the links to see the spread and more than just one viewers comments.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I was checking a bunch of reviews and I didn't see any score on the original, yet Google displays a 4 out of 5 score on the review.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Aw, they had such a great opportunity to rid us of those self-important louts and the missed it!
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Searching for
movie: Play it, Sam
did not find Casablanca. Alas.
Nate
I'm gonna moderate you up for that!!! ... uh wait...D'oh!
you had me at #!
An interesting use of Google Movies maybe using this to see how flawed the and utterly pointless award shows are.
What could possibly go wrong?
shizzolate that sh*t
If I had mod points you'd be getting them.
This feature is still in beta.
The last /. google story was on the new google campus in the Dalles.
What happens when you combine the following:
1)A huge bundle of OC lines running down the Columbia Gorge. (some for a Hanford-Los Alimos network, some for Internet2, and some standard teir one backbone.)
2)30 acres, and possible 80 acres more of server farms in an inductrial park.
3)A 2000 mW power plant less than a mile away, with google asking for a guaranteed supply AND a guarantee that the power-hungry aluminium smelting plants won't re-open.
4) Google's recent purchases around the country of dark fibre.
5) The release of a google movie tool.
Video servers need to be magnitudes more powerful than a normal SQL/static HTMl web page...It seems to me as if google is slowly setting up for a video on demand service.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
google rocks. everything they do is sweet and beautiful. i love google. *hug*
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Server Error The server encountered an error and could not complete your request. If the problem persists, please mail error@google.com and mention this error message and the query that caused it.
Returned on every query I run.
This is just the first stage of tag searches, as per Technorati's development of a 'Folksonomy' semantic structure.
.
-shpoffo
..... do you hear it?.......
Google is giving me server errors when I try to search. Co-incidence or did /. strike again? Is this a job for Mulder and Scully?
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
negative ghost rider the pattern is full
but why not mention this or put it in the USA category
;) I get this weird feeling that I have.
Maybe because the story doesn't even mention the US specific part of the service at all?
It took me a while to figure out what the hell you were whining about, but yep - the theatre mapping service (which isn't even mentioned in the slashdot article!) sure is "US centric". The other part of the service (the cool part; the one your local news paper won't do for you!) is pretty world wide, no?
Or do you consider the fact that it seems to use mainly American movie reviews enough reason to deem the service useless outside the US.
Or have I simply been trolled?
May we live long and die out
Everyone should know this!
I run a site that reviews films on DVD, and I don't see any of my site's reviews among the results. How is Google deciding what is a review, and how are they parsing it for scores?
It's been interesting over the last couple of months to see the new google services and how well they integrate with each other.
for instance, I use google local and at some point it squirreled away a cookie of my location. This information is used by google maps and also the movie reviews.
when I type movie: Hotel Rwanda it brings me to a listing of show times and links in my town. Another click on "7:40" brings me to the another site (movietickets.com, fandago.com, etc) where I can order a ticket. The point is: two clicks to getting movie tickets. Why would I go to any other site at this point? it's so easy with google, especially when I type it into the built in toolbar on my browser.
At this point it seems like any horizontal web app is a possible target for google.
Google's "movie" feature benefits Joe and Jane Modem more than anyone else. After some tests, it is clear that quite a bit of search results are from epinions.com and Google's own online "Groups" community. This is not to say that big-name movie critics employed by major papers in New York and Chicago have more insight into the art of cinema, but still, I don't see how this new thing from Google is better than imdb.com or any other movie-centric websites. Of course, we know what that chunk of blank space on the right side of the page is for.
Sun and Fun
Oooops - I screwed this one up guys using the wrong operator - thought Google was being screwballish and thought I'd point out an funky example - sorry 'bout that ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Sounds like Rotten Tomatoes to me...
I'll stick with metacritic.com to get my film reviews. While I'm there I can also get videogame, dvd, and cd reviews. Plus, they give a rating from 0-100 which is much more useful than the 1-5 Google is using.
I wonder what are the criteria used by Google to include a review in the search results?
If i search for "Alexander movie review" with the normal www.google.com method, my movie review comes up around #60 or so, but if i do a "movie:Alexander" then my review does not show up at all.
(Note: my review is on my blog)
"What happens when you combine the following:..."
Superman III?
Hello,
I'm a number of growing Slashdot readers that are tried of the "Slashdot" google-PR machine.
Please shed some light on some other news, most of the "google" news on Slashdot are no more then PR for Google!
Show some support for something other then google.
Why did they split the URL and search input fields in Firefox? In Mozilla, it's one field, and it's really fast and convenient. With Google rolling out new products that look like new URL protocols like "movie:", the combo field would be even more useful. Especially with a Firefox plugin that actually made it work like a URL protocol, hitting several engines with the same query, in addition to Google, selecting them by the protocol entered.
--
make install -not war
I'd say that I would still have preferred an implementation of Yahoo video search by Google. With their huge database, imagine how much pr0n we would have been able to download.
I thought all new developments in web technology were driven by pr0n!?
I didn't know Google was that energy efficient.
I want to see a map of all local cinemas showing a particular film, either "movie:constantine" shows a link to a local area map, or I can search on http://maps.google.com/ for the same term. However it looks like they haven't reached that level of integration yet as it just shows places with the name "constantine":
i ne&sll=40.838190%2C-73.941978&sspn=0.235840%2C0.46 7004
...
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=movie%3A%20constant
Here's hoping
I found Normal Google apparantly better than this movie operator. I think you can add more.
Senthil
you mean Google!=Internet?
Google is one of the fastest-growing and thus interesting IT companies, and also easily the most popular search engine in the world. Slashdot is news for nerds. Do the math.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
it seems it's indexing older reviews too. a search on nightmare pops up reviews from 1984 and 1990.
they are indexing close captions from tv as well!
check out The simpsons!
Oddly enough, my own movie review site doesn't seem to be linked up there (even when searching for far-from-mainstream junk), though I get ample hits from the normal google search. Go figure on that one.
That's too bad. I don't think I can use it until they fix that.
AccountKiller
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a 2,000 milliwatt power plant less than a mile away, too. I call it... a battery. In fact it's MUCH less than a mile away.
Gee, an internet company, needing more bandwidth... It can't just be that they need more bandwidth for serving up images to more people.
I must say, that's an incredibly stupid sentiment... On-demand servers aren't going to be doing video processing (that would be done before-hand), just serving up large files. So an SQL or HTTP server would be using up magnitudes more power.
And these same points applied to Yahoo many years ago, and they aren't serving up full-length movies yet.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yahoo does this too and if Google just started this, Yahoo has been doing it longer.
And while I haven't tried Google's database thing, Rotten Tomatoes does it as does Metacritic, and Metacritic does music too, so it ain't nothing new, it just has the Google name.
Some searches for japanese movies (like "Ski High") return nothing...
Hrm, seems like you haven't received an invite. Gmail does have POP support.