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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.
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!
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!
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.
You have been warned; use your discretion.
Well, I was not-so-secretly hoping that they were harming movie critics.
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.
This is Slashdot; he's willing to bed anyone. The more algorithms, the better.
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?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q= movie%3Achristmas+lights/
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
More likely movie critics will take umbrage with this as it interfers with their ability to hold an audience and make a living. Worse even it may include some of their old reviews on news sites, where the critic isn't making a further dime on their performance and demand royalties from Google.
Hey. It could happen.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"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.
If and when I want reviews on a movie, this is the best review aggregator site I have found so far:
MRQE
#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 assure you that's a bug, not a feature.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
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.
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
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)
No, it isn't. It just sucks in that typical "We don't want to pay for content, so we'll aggregate what others have collected" Google way.
Like Google News, there are no ads and there likely never will be. People don't like to have others profit off their content.
For more information, click here.
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.
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.
"What happens when you combine the following:..."
Superman III?