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Google Adds Movie Ratings, Times, Reviews
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.
What I wonder is where Google gets its ratings from, most movie titles always give you results to the IMDB where reviews can be found anyway...
Next feature might be Music/Concert shows.
but will it let us know which ones to avoid?
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
I remember on spotting this feature (which I am unable to use since google decided only to support the other side of the bath tub) some month ago.
I might add that there is some (currently unused) synergy to http://video.google.com/ . There is no reason not to extend google video to movie texts.
This sounds familiar.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Try this search, or to put it into the search box: "movie:movie". Enter your zip code for a full listing of locally showing movies.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I just wonder what they're doing with all of this data. Between zip code and links visited, you could assemble some pretty interesting demographics.
-Ben
This feature exists. It is implemented in the google toolbar (look for two smileys). At least I remember it in Version 1.something.
Even if you dont remember the movie name, you can try searching for plot/key phrases!!
e.g. searching for Future world (or google "movies: future world") comes up with a decent list, with "Twelve Monkeys" on 1st and "Minority Report" as second!
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.
Say Good Bye to Mr. Fandango....
... Everything.
The only thing it does now is sell tickets, but who really wants to buy movie tickets online?
Onward Google, onward! Search
Favorite
They should allow people to rate and review websites. That would make a little more sense, don't you think? Plus, it would be original.
...unless, of course, the reviews were presented in such a way that they didn't affect which web sites people decided to click on - in which case the whole rating system would be little more than a waste of resources.
Considering that probably Google's prime concern is creating a tamper-proof search system, I don't think they'd invite a system that practically screamed "Please tamper with our rating system by posting rave reviews for your brochure site for herbal Viagra."
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
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."
and it works very similarly...here's the result for the same movie: http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=FP-pull-web-t&p= kicking+screaming
I know Google SMS has the ability to retrieve movie showtimes for the current day in your area, though I haven't yet found a way to get future movie times (say, what opens tomorrow) through Google SMS (read: I've been too lazy to go read the help and find out).
I'm rather surprised that it sounds like Google SMS got something before the mainstream Google web did.
Still, very cool. I *heart* Google.
Typing "Kicking and Screaming" indeed brings out the movie review link, but typing another movie (e.g. 'Closer') does not, unless you include the "movie:" operator (that is, search for "movie:Closer").
I wonder why this is so but, oh well, Google is all-wise!
I.E. at the very least, have one of those "type the word in the graphic" things.
On a tangential note, the war between spambots to read those things and websites to obfuscate them is starting to lead to a lot of websites that are asking me to find the hideously distorted numbers in completely unintelligible scribble.
Eventually, as spambots get smarter and smarter, they're going to start having to retain the services of that guy who draws "Where's Waldo": "There are six numbers hiding in the magical forest. Can you find them all?"
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Uh, the Google movie/local search has been working for months! Slashdot link from Feb 23rd here In fact, the IMDB link has been there from the start. It amazes me when some parent finds out about Google's "new" 3 month old feature, they think it's new, and news worthy to boot. Whoopty do, next headline: "New feature, Google aggregates data!!" No kidding? As usual, good ol' /. dupe checking works it's magic! :)
Not to dis Google or anything, but since when is every minuscule innovation on web based portals revolutionary? Endless "betas" and rapid cash burns to develop the next biggest thing is what turned the dot-com boom into a bust. Is Google next? Nah, there's no competition in the search engine market. Hehe.
Sure, people love Google, I love Google, but this stuff is something Yahoo has been doing for 10 years and people are atingle over it like its new technology!? Innovation only leads to more complex interfaces, and the simplicity of Google's very nature will only become bulkier and bloated the more of this "crap" they add. What, links to outside review services just weren't enough? Creature Feep if you ask me.
How many of the H2G2 reviews were bought? I saw the movie this afternoon and can't see how anyone at Yahoo! or wherever could give it an 'A' (yet there were several such reviews).
I completely agree... how could anyone possibly have a different opinion to you?
It was just this afternoon that some co-workers and I were discussing how awful Slashdot has gotten about posting ad "stories" and dupes, and now here's another duplicate story.
I understand that some dupes slip through because certain topics can be hard to search for, but with the first Google movies story showing up as the topmost search result for "Google movies," how is it even possible not to find that this story was already posted?
I had read Slashdot almost daily for years, and subscribed for months. These days, thanks to the drastic downtown in quality, I'm down to visiting just a few times a week, and haven't added to my subscription in a year.
I would expect a company like google to use Cinema Source since they are the #1 database clearinghouse of movietime information, that nearly every cinema in America communicates with.
Unfortunately, they seem to be using some other service which has incomplete records and doesn't even list some of my local theaters.
Compare for yourself by doing a search on moviefone or yahoo, and then check google.
there are lots of targeted searches you can do on google via keywords, including focusing on scholarly/research papers and articles.
The complete list of keywords and their syntax is here.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
not a bad idea, just it would add a bunch of extra space needed for the review icons or text, and quite frankly i like the simplicity of google, thats what made it great in the first place, right?
little things like the movie reviews, basic calculator and answers to simple questions like "population of country X" are all great, but anything more -- esspecially in the way of code for EVERY web page would both be bulky and in my opinion detracting from the original concept of simplicity.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
I don't understand why some of these features don't make it to Google Canada as well. I know the US is the US, but Canada isnt that much different (same movie premieres, same movies, etc etc etc) So why not have a simple version of this on Google.ca, maybe it will link up with the TWO (yes, count them) movie chains in Canada and tell us the showtimes :D
I still use Yahoo maps, but the difference is that Google's version is a lot less cluttered, less confusing and easier to use. In short, they are doing the same thing everyone else is doing, but better. The only reason I don't use Google maps is they didn't have direction finding last I checked.
Google is doing a lot of stuff that is already done by other companies, but with a better look, more sensible layout and overall better ease of use.
This is, afterall, my opinion, but it seems to be similar to those elsewhere in this forum.
I just hope that they continue to improve everything they've already established as well, and they don't overextend themselves.
1. Google is a totally great Linux / OSS / GPL success story. There is money to be made building great things for people to use on the OSS software stack.
2. I, for one am interested in new Google projects. Getting the most use out of an already very useful service is the powergeek thing to do. Heck, we are always talking about new things to do with hardware, software, etc... I don't see Google being any different.
2a. Where are the other cool projects coming from? MSN, Yahoo? (Well ok maybe the music thing, but we talked about that already.) Google is innovating in a big way, bringing lots of value to the net along for the ride. They have advanced the state of the art in web interfaces, scaleable file-systems, and search several times. Can't really say that about the others now can you?
3. Savvy? Are you sure you are reading the right site? The things that Google does are *hard*. --really hard. And they do it on OSS to boot! Remember #1, that is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
Blogging because I can...
google maps has directions, and satellite views, and local search results..
This was covered on slashdot in like, 1970 when it first happened...
or else!
Earlier on /. I'd read the reason Google News still carried the Beta label was according to the TOS of most (if not all) news providers, distribution for commerical use was prohibited.
This clearly leverages off Google News, so somethings not making sense. There isn't a Beta label on Google Reviews even though it sources from their news feed. How can they use these reviews without a beta label, if the remainder of the newspaper requires it? How long before these reviews start to carry text ads? And does this mean the Beta label will be dropped off Google News as well?
In any case, this wouldn't be much use to me as I primarly use IMDB as a driver for selecting movies. I find critics working for the mainstream media are, well, just too mainstream for my tastes. I get more value from my peer's opinions than some overpaid critic.
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Without even referencing the book or the BBC series, the movie itself wasn't assembled very well. There was some individual talent in the movie, but it was drained by the audio sounding like it was recorded in a gymnasium and the combined actors had no chemistry at all. It was like watching a high school film project. If this was the intent of the director, then the initial big-budget dolphin musical and the first-rate hollywood effects failed entirely to set the mood. I also wonder how much the actors struggled with green screens, as was the case in the Star Wars prequels.
In other up-to-the-minute news, Slashdot adds the ability to post comments.
No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page. Haha, gotta love their sense of humor
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Average rating
3.8 / 5
Based on 40 reviews
My guess is that the ranking of those reviews are determined through PageRank. Higher ranked sites get higher placement in the list of reviews. As for Filthy's review, could it be that a) they don't have a clear rating system that Google can automatically pull from the page (the graphic is the only key, rather than a text "2 out of 5 fingers" or something) or b) that Google is a family-friendly service, and they don't want to include a page that starts "I'm beginning to think those grassfuckers in Hollywood aren't paying attention to me. All this time, I thought they gave a shit. Maybe not, though. I can't even count the number of times I've told those assholes that we want to be entertained by movies."
Shouldn't that be Yahoo! knows all? Afterall they've been doing this for years. Speaking of Google and Yahoo!, Yahoo! was one of the original investers in Google before the IPO.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's why I also google a few other random zip codes along with my own, just to keep them guessing.
Yeah, Altavista was my prefered search engine for years. Now most of the tyme I start with Google but occasionally I'll go with About, especially when it comes to archeology and anthropology or photography as About has really good sections on these. When Google doesn't do it for me I'll then go to Dmoz, Teoma, or Mooter.
FalconShould there be a Law?
[i]Actually, if they just made the image a question that you'd have to answer (an easy one), I think that would go a long way to make it harder for bots to get it right.[/i]
Now that is [i]interesting[/i].
But consider that there's big money at stake here. If a company like Yahoo complied ten thousand images with simple questions on them ("What animal says 'quack'?"), I can pretty much guarantee that spam companies would simply respond by hiring ten teenagers to catalog a thousand questions each over the course of a week and recreate Yahoo's database.
I'm not sure how one would get around this problem. And, of course, there's a language-barrier problem, too: a Japanese person might have good enough English to want to use the website for a legitimate purpose, but might not know that we think ducks say 'quack' (because, let's face it, they don't).
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."