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Google Adds Movie Ratings, Times, Reviews

Posted by Zonk on from the goog-cinema dept.

Mike Skweir writes " I was going to take my daughter to the movies this afternoon and I wanted to find out more about the movie 'Kicking & Screaming'... so I Googled it. To my surprise the following response occurred . When I followed the link, it actually gave me several reviews, movie ratings and the ability to search for a theatre in my area." Once you've entered your zip code, it will also tell you what movies are playing in your area.

7 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Such a Great Way to Market by PogieMT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google's true genius might be the way they add new features...and let it all get advertised by users. Instead of the Yahoo model of cluttering up the main page so much that is unusable, Google just adds a feature--and people find out when they try it, or it ends up on a site like Slashdot

    1. Re:Such a Great Way to Market by ampmouse · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actualy, it happens very often, usualy more then once. A article about the same topic was posted just about three months ago...

    2. Re:Such a Great Way to Market by fm6 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      And there you have it. Right now, the folks making the decisions are folks that think like us.
      Sorry, but that's standard Geek bigotry. Most web surfers are not "people like us". Most people seem to be pretty tolerant of obnoxious advertising, and the 900 million people who surf the web these days are more representative of society at large, not Geek culture. So it's a little suprising that obnoxious ads are less effective online they they are in other media.

      My theory is this: people are so inundated with advertising that they need a mechanism to filter them out, to keep from getting distracted to death. Most people seem to be adept and creating little cognitive filters to eliminate distraction. (Geeks, by and large, seem to be pretty poor at this -- I've often wondered if there isn't some neurological difference between Geeks and "normal" people.) So most people litterally don't see most of the ads that are thrown at them every day.

      But by trying to make their ads less obnoxious, Google removed all the visual cues that these cognitive filters rely on. Which is why market research indicates that most people don't perceive Google ads as ads, even though they're clearly labeled as such! In other words, Google found a way to get past people's ant-ad wetware -- and found it purely by accident.

  2. Google by wcitechnologies · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If google starts issuing IDs for each user, I wouldn't be suprised if it became more important than a social security number.

    --
    Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
  3. Re:Rate web pages by Chiasmus_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They could ask you what type of search you are doing - technical research, entertainment, etc. and sort your results accordingly.

    And in doing so, Google would create a brand new business model:

    1. Create a website that advertises having pictures of Britney Spears and Natalie Portman in compromising positions and completely uninhibited, but of course contains only seven thousand banner ads.
    2. Create hundreds of spambots to report to Google that your website is *the best* place to find quality research on apache, linux, lemmings, the San Francisco earthquake, herpes simplex B, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Calvinism, and navel lint.
    3. Profit (see, that time step two existed)

    --
    "Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
  4. Re:another google innovation by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    More appropriately, can Google host a page that it cannot cache?

  5. Re:Oh, isn't that old? by presroi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Okay, so if you live in the New York, you might actually try the following:

    Use google to find a movie that might be worth the money you will be spending.
    Use google to find a movie theatre that has the movie on schedule.
    Use google's orkut or google's newly aquired dodgeball to find someone to join your movie evening.
    Use google ride to order a cab to the movie theatre.
    Use google groups to discuss the result of the evening.

    So, if google was smart, they would enhance their APIs to encourage people to combine different google applications. My first attempt would be something like a google timewaster/blinddate/"hey, I'm new in this town, are there real people around?"/... Or is this something labs.google.com will provide in the next six months? and so on... I'm tired of this "what if google did a, b, c" I would like to do it myself.