So, Google introduces it's new movie search and the blog community goes wild talking about it. Sure, it's not likely to get to the scale of Google:Calculator or even Google:Maps, but there are certainly a lot of fun things that can be done with it.

First off, reviews aren't just linked to but rather scraped such that an average rating can be given. Second off, if you search for a direct title you'll get to enter your zip code to get movie times. If you just search for something about the movie, you'll go directly to information about it, including reviews. Google's examples are fun, such as "red pill blue pill" but isn't there anything more interesting to search for? Ok, that doesn't quite do what I'd want. This one (fun with email) is close, where the real result is the third movie. This one (nuclear explosion) got some interesting results, but not the movie I was looking for.

So, will it replace IMDB? I'd say probably not. IMDB has so much more information. It could easily replace IMDB for figure out the name of a movie, but that's about it.

Another problem is having to put "movie:" in front of the searches. If you don't do this, but you search on a movie title that is currently in theaters, you'll get a new result box at the top, which is nice. But if you search for an older movie name, not only does it not come up with the result box, it often might come up early as an IMDB search hit. ;) (And it's not just that this particular title wasn't unique.)

So no, it won't take over IMDB. But can IMDB answer this age old question: What movies contain references to the Apple iPod? (IMDB result... tripod anyone?)

Google Blog

Posted by Shane on February 24, 2005 9:42 AM | Permalink