Mountain View, California — Stranded in the middle of a foreign land, armed only with a mobile phone? Search engine titan Google has unveiled a mobile version of its new movie search service for the Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Pixi, Android-powered smartphones and Palm’s webOS, to make on-the-fly searching for movies easier.
With this latest mobile fine-tuning, Google’s movie search can locate theaters showing a movie and even play a trailer on mobile devices. Genre filters in Google movie search allow finding movies by type.
Mobile Movie Search Optimized
With the new offering that promises to make it easier for movie fans to plan their next theater trip while on the go, Google is touting increased readability and efficiency, along with larger and darker icons. When you search for “movies” on your iPhone, Palm or Android’s mobile browser, you can click on “more movies” and an updated interface appears, lending you a film’s synopsis, trailer, and local venues to check it out. You can also review ratings, list films by category, and look at movie posters.
Searching by theater gives you the options to include the day’s movies or the ability to select movies by “theaters,” nearest you, or reviewing a theater’s listings to see what works with your schedule.
Google’s renewed movie listings page incorporates buttons that empowers web visitors to play the latest movie trailers on their phones. Mobile users also are able to drill down to access more details about a film, such as the movie’s rating, wrote Google mobile team member Nick Fey on the Google Mobile Blog.
“Just touch the poster or movie title and you will see our new movie-details page that has a synopsis of the movie, a more detailed list of show-times, the cast and crew, and pictures,” Fey wrote.
The new service also empowers users with new ways to explore films by genre. “Sometimes, you might feel like seeing a sci-fi flick or a romance, but you are not sure what is out in theaters,” Associate Product Manager Dan Stokeley wrote on The Official Google Blog. “With genre filters you can begin browsing right away and quickly find the right movie for you.”
Since the improved movie search is integrated with Google Maps, so if a user browses by theater they will find entrée to a map of closest theaters, and can tap on the link to the theater of choice in order to see what movies are playing and when with a feature that searches for both specific movies or theaters and their listings.
“Google Maps Navigation is an Internet-linked GPS system with voice guidance and automatic rerouting, all running on your mobile phone,” Google product manager Michael Siliski wrote in a blog post. “Using Google services over your phone’s data link brings important benefits to GPS navigation users, like using Google search (typed or spoken) to enter your destination; fresh map, business, and traffic data; and satellite and Street View imagery along your route. This release also includes the new Layers feature, which lets you overlay geographical information on the map. View My Maps, transit lines, Wikipedia articles about places and more.”
Google’s mobile moves come on the heels of a series of recent acquisitions and new releases in the mobile app front. The upgraded movie functions are part of a more comprehensive overhaul Google launched for mobile apps on the iPhone and Android devices, starting last spring.
In the mobile arena, Google continues to introduce mini-applications for all the major operating systems, including those for BlackBerrys, iPhones and Palm’s Pixi and Pre, as it simultaneously bolsters apps for its own Android OS.
Google’s movie search results are available now in English on mobile devices in the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. To access the new mobile service, users go to Google.com on their handset’s web browser, search for “movies” and then tap on the “more movies” link, wrote Fey on the Google Mobile Blog.