This is from my Ask Dave Taylor Tech Support site...

I only just noticed this: when you search on the name of a movie on Google, it now shows you lots of cool information about the film, including where it's playing in your neighborhood. Very nice. But when did Google launch this new Google movie information service?

I use Google all the time, but have to admit that I hadn't searched for a movie lately and you're right! Indeed, when I search for V for Vendetta here's what I see now:

Darn cool, and if I enter my zipcode it'll even remember my local theaters and show me when the movie is playing locally:

This is another splendid, simple and darn useful service introduced by Google, my congratulations to the team for this.

When you click on a movie name, you get excerpts of major reviews very similar to the Amazon IMDb service:

The other thing to notice when you play with this service is that Google's added a new search operator movie: which is how you can tag any search as a query looking for a movie.

Very interesting stuff! Try this search: movie:Arabia. The results show a number of movies whose reviews (in major review publications, mostly) mention "Arabia", including Action in Arabia and, one of my favorite David Lean films, Lawrence of Arabia.

Another fine addition to the Google service. When did it launch? I don't see any way to figure that out, but I will say that I bet it's just in the last week or two.

I like it!

But, somehow, I bet companies like Moviefone aren't very happy about this development.