Features

Movie Struck: Google to the Rescue

By Indu Britto

Google engineers are seemingly putting out new and nifty tools with the ease of a newly trued wheel and the pace of a hollywood flick. Now, its the turn of the movie-goer to exult: movie showtimes are available on Google's leading Web search engine and can be accessed via personal computers or mobile phones and other wireless devices that use short-message service. If that doesn't excite you, the new feature also provides information such as theater locations and reviews, and enables users to search for movies by title, plot or genre.

By searching on a movie's name, users can obtain film information, reviews, and local show times for specific titles. Organic listings appear below those results, and sponsored listings run as usual in the right column. Entering "movie:" or "showtimes:" before a movie name causes a larger number of results to appear alone, without additional organic listings.

Of course, the movie session time search service is currently available only in the US market, and Google sources refused to say if the service will be made available locally.

Furthering its strategy of building a complete ecosystem of search tools, the new feature integrates with Google Local to provide showtimes of nearby movies. Users can then utilize Google Maps to bring up directions to the theater and even buy tickets online via MovieTickets.com.

In addition to film studios, Google expects marketing interest from video and DVD distribution companies such as Netflix, Blockbuster Online and Amazon.com. Ditto for the marketers of celebrity wallpaper, mobile ringtones and other merchandise.

Google, Yahoo and most recently Microsoft's MSN Internet unit (See MSN Search) are locked in a tough battle to offer the most comprehensive Web search products. Hopefully the end user will emerge victorious with diverse searchable information at her fingertips, and the companies will compete venomously, free from protracted battles involving intellectual property and privacy issues.

And oh, if you are in that movie-goer mood, you may want to check out this scoop on how the above marketplace will look like, come 2014.


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