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Google Businesses The Internet Media Movies

Google Announces 'Google Movies' 261

Posted by timothy from the not-that-this-is-a-time-sink-or-anything dept.
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.'"
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Google Announces 'Google Movies' More

Google Announces 'Google Movies'

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  • Just use booble!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lecithin ( 745575 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:37PM (#11760280)
    You can get all sorts of information on movies from Booble. http://www.booble.com/ [booble.com]

  • No torrent option yet? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pac ( 9516 ) <paulo...candido@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:40PM (#11760307)
    If I type "movie:Lord of the Rings type=torrent" will it bring up links to the torrents along with the reviews?

  • Screw "movies"... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neiras ( 723124 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:40PM (#11760314)
    ...why isn't this being presented as a Google Reviews service, reviewing anything and everything? Now THAT would become a cultural phenomenon.
    • Google already offers product reviews through Froogle BETA. Just search for any old MP3 player [google.com] and you can find reviews of both the products listed and the companies that sell them.

      This information is collected and presented by Google, setting them up as a potential competitor to sites like Epinions.
      • Oops, spoke too soon. Upon further review, the reviews referenced by Froogle are just aggregated from other review sites like BizRate and PriceGrabber. Google's not creating or managing any of its content... yet.

        Remember when Deja.com, formerly DejaNews, tried to re-establish itself as a portal for product reviews? That didn't pan out too well, and the company was eventually swallowed up by Google. Fortunately, Google has their hugely-profitable ad business to fall back on.
    • I already thought of that. Too bad I dont have the design and marketing skills necessary.
    • why isn't this being presented as a Google Reviews service, reviewing anything and everything? Now THAT would become a cultural phenomenon.

      I'll review anything for you. Let's start with that new 42" plasma TV from Dell. Just ship it to my house and the review will be written within a week of receipt.

      But I do like your idea . . . set up a specific google search (like froogle) to index all the review sites on the web. Stuff like "Tom's Hardware", Kevein Kelly's "Cool Tools" site, etc. The only troub

  • Just wait for the next iteration... (Score:5, Funny)

    by slashrogue ( 775436 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:41PM (#11760323)
    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!

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by P-Frank ( 788137 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:41PM (#11760324) Homepage
    What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com]? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)

      by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) * on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:45PM (#11760387)
      - No ads.
      - Google goodness and integration.
      - Better search features and movie location.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:52PM (#11760475)
      There really isn't any major difference other than that Google Movies doesn't have a front page like RT does, rather it's just a huge DB of reviews. That said however, RT has become increasingly cluttered/ad-riddled since they were picked up by the IGN/GameSpy group, so I see this as a positive thing both for the lack of distractions, and hopefully encouraging RT(and by reflection, Google) in to improving these services.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

      by spisska ( 796395 )

      What makes this different from Rotten Tomatoes? And I am genuinely asking this question, not being a horrible sarcastic person.

      The difference is that Rotten Tomatoes has a confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored home page, whereas Google is sparse, utilitarian, and fast.

      Maybe some people like confusing, graphics-heavy, vomit-colored pages. There seem to be a lot of them (at least the confusing, graphics-heavy bit). I've always liked Google for it's simplicity. That and the fact that it works.

    • 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)

  • Good Move (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:42PM (#11760338)
    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.

  • Sounds sort of like IMDb Pro... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are also movie 'home pages' like this one which aggregate all reviews AND calculate the total score based on the number of stars.
    Sounds just like the MOVIEmeter thing on IMDb Pro [imdbpro.com], except it's based on how much people are willing to write about something vs. how many people want to read about something.

  • quit it already (Score:3, Interesting)

    by subrama6 ( 157306 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:42PM (#11760342)
    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.
    • Their underlying technology is all searching, which they still do great. What they are doing is not putting their hands into too many pies, but taking some slices of the search pie and putting icing on it.

      dam

    • Re:quit it already (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:50PM (#11760442) Homepage Journal
      Perhaps, however they are smart enough to realize that indexing all that information out there on the web is the way to go. I mean even with search engines, trying to find things on the web sometimes feels like standing under Niagra falls with a teaspoon (basically they want to be the guy who makes the teaspoon :-) ). And since they are already indexing everything up the wazoo, why not present the data they already have anyway in different ways?
    • Since when is Apple being crucified for their various iPod offerings??

  • IMDb rocks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gustgr ( 695173 ) <(gustgr) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:44PM (#11760365)
    It will not beat IMDb [imdb.com]. Maybe Google will try to buy it soon and turn it into GMDb (Google Movie Database).
    • there's no way - imdb belongs to amazon (take a look at the bottom of the imdb launch page). amazon wants to compete with google. this is google's way of competing back

    • Re:IMDb rocks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rainman_bc ( 735332 )
      Agreed. Google Movies (TM) seems to be referencing reviews from Commercial sources.

      What makes IMDB awesome is that you get real people who aren't paid to write the review.
      • On a side topic, I find the reviews on IMDB to be pretty fascinating. I saw The Grudge with my wife and we both loved it. I read the reviews on IMDB the next day and they swung the gammut from loved it to hated it to didn't understand it (not sure how about that last one, but there were quite a few of them). After reading the first couple of pages I realized just how unhelpful they were as an aggregate. Since the reviews are self chosen, they mainly come from people with either a strong negative or stro
        • Yeah, I find the text reviews pretty erradic, but the numeric review has been bang on.

          The public might surprise you. Movies like "station agent", "happiness", "love liza", "swimming pool", and "dogville" score a lot better than I would have expected from the general public. (No particular reason I picked them; they were some of the best of the intelligent movies I've seen)

          Don't forget that if you've seen these movies above, you generally understand them and appreciate their worth.
    • 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 sa

    • Its better than IMDB (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Evidence #1 [google.com]

      #2 [google.com]

      And the final Proof [google.com]

  • Rotten Tomatoes (Score:4, Informative)

    by Vaystrem ( 761 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:44PM (#11760372)
    This is exactly what http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ [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.
    • RT sold out a couple years ago. They used to have unbiased aggregate reviews but look at the T-Meter reading for some truly horrible movies in the last couple of years. Movies that would have gotten 20% or less now get 60% (e.g. Spongebob, Hitch) which is just enough to make them "fresh". RT seems to include selective reviews instead of all sources. This massaging gives studios decent ratings even for craptacular flicks.

      I welcome more competition in the aggregate review biz.
  • I got a chuckle out of the #1 entry for a Google Search [google.com] for "movies:christmas lights" [komar.org]
  • 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. ;)

  • Dang! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Arslan ibn Da'ud ( 636514 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:48PM (#11760418) Homepage
    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...
  • 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 movi
  • No actors, poor ratings. But then again, who would use it just for the ratings?

  • movie: ZIP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John.P.Jones ( 601028 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:51PM (#11760453)
    movie: ZIP

    Brings up showtimes at local theaters... Goodbye moviefone hello google

  • Problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nearlygod ( 641860 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:51PM (#11760456) Homepage
    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 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.
      • Because if you search for a currently playing movie it (correctly or incorrectly) assumes that you are more interested in showtimes than reviews. You can correct its behavior by adding "review" to the end of the movie search.
    • Interesting: Try doing a search for "Pinot Noir" [google.com].

    • Re:Problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by leibnizme ( 264472 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:40PM (#11760888)
      If you search for "movie:sideways" Google assumes you want to know about showtimes in your area, and asks for your location.

      If you search for "movie:sideways review", however, Google gives you links to the reviews.
  • ...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)

    IronChefMorimo
  • No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page.'"

    But COULD wee harm them? At least let us use them a bit.

    Bunch a blowhards.

  • Rotten Tomatoes plus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lockholm ( 703003 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:54PM (#11760489)
    The valid comparison isn't so much IMDB [imdb.com] as it is Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com], which also compiles reviews for movies. However, with the google version, you don't even have to know the name of the movie:

    "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 [starlightdrivein.com] in it only picks out [google.com] (2nd listing) the first movie for each screen that night.

  • Movie Review Query Engine (Score:3, Informative)

    by prakslash ( 681585 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:55PM (#11760506)

    If and when I want reviews on a movie, this is the best review aggregator site I have found so far:

    MRQE [mrqe.com]

  • Shills (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:01PM (#11760553)
    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.

  • could be a bit smarter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:01PM (#11760560) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Who Decides? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by filmguru ( 710596 )

    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/ [filmguru.net] mentioned. What's up with that?

    (Shameless plug)

    --FilmGuru

  • Yea... but I heard (Score:5, Funny)

    by Altus ( 1034 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:03PM (#11760571) Homepage

    that 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!

    • Where are the french movies damnit! we wont sit idly by while google continues to push it anglo-centric agenda on the world!
      Presumably when the French "justice" system stops handing out ridiculous rulings against them.

  • Similiar to Rotten Tomatoes, but not as good (Score:5, Informative)

    by bjdevil66 ( 583941 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:04PM (#11760582)

    I can see them working, but it's not the best system. Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com] 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 don't see anything new here relative to other similar systems, except perhaps being slightly faster.

    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 ho

  • Still needs work (Score:4, Informative)

    by AceCaseOR ( 594637 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:11PM (#11760646) Homepage Journal
    I did a search [google.com] for Manos [imdb.com]. I didn't get what I was looking for. Maybe the crawlers need to run a little longer.
  • 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.
  • Aw, they had such a great opportunity to rid us of those self-important louts and the missed it!
  • An interesting use of Google Movies maybe using this to see how flawed the and utterly pointless award shows are.

  • Google is going into the Video-on-Demand Business (Score:5, Interesting)

    by littlerubberfeet ( 453565 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @06:29PM (#11760795)
    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.
  • 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?

  • integration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by harshaw ( 3140 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @07:04PM (#11761049)
    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.

  • Metacritic? (Score:5, Informative)

    by techstar25 ( 556988 ) <techstar25@gmail. c o m> on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @08:08PM (#11761520) Journal
    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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

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