Google is making it easier to choose which movie to see on your next trip to your local multiplex by embedding movie trailers into its search results.
From google.com, you can type a search term like "showtime" and a location, like a city name or zip code, and a list of movies that meet your search criteria will appear. Beside each movie result will be a Trailer button. Click it, and a trailer grabbed from YouTube will appear in a pop-up window.
Trailer buttons are also displayed in searches for single movies, too, Google explained in a blog posting Thursday.
By comparison, a search for showtimes and a zip code in Microsoft's Bing search engine produces links to Fandango, Moviefone, and MSN Movies. In the "related searches" column beside the results are links to trailers for shows on the Showtime network.
Currently, trailer buttons are displayed only for English-speaking countries. That prompted some commenters on Google's blog post to express a hope that the feature expands to other countries.
Google's movie trailer feature is another shot in its search engine war with Bing, a war where each side has been matching the other's features.
For example, after Google announced it was allowing users to integrate information from their Google+ accounts into their search results, Bing introduced a sidebar that contains information from a searcher's social networks. Among other things, it allowed searchers to tap into the knowledge of their social network on the subject of a search.
Google's movie trailer idea is such a good idea, it won't be surprising to see it pop up in some form on Bing in the near future.