Google Search Will Soon Include Live TV Listings

An anonymous reader writes: Google announced users will soon see live TV listings within their search results. Fortune writes, "Pretty soon, you will be able to Google the name of a television show or movie and see live air times for that content within the search results." The announcement was made at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. "What we're seeing is that more and more, viewers are turning to their phones to find out what to watch, where to watch it and when it's available -- in fact, searches for TV shows and films on mobile have grown more than 55% in the past year alone," Google said in a blog post announcing the new feature. Google Search users will have the option of clicking an "edit provider" link that will allow them to enter their specific cable provider when they search for the name of a TV show or movie. There's no specific date for when the feature will be launching, just that it will be launching "soon."

Re:

[quenda]

The summary should briefly explain what "Live TV" means, for the benefit of younger slashdot readers.

Its one of those things like fax machines, that should not exist any more, but some people still use it from habit.

Awww Shucks

[Ol Olsoc]

I use DuckDuckGo, so I won't see this info I don't want to see. If I wanted schedule, I'd Goog^H^H^H^H^H^H^ search for it.

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[Coren22]

Everything else is prerecorded or on-demand, with on-demand really our go-to now -- so fuck you, CW removing your channel from it years ago; we haven't watched a single program of yours since, on any platform.

What?

http://tv.verizon.com/series/6... [verizon.com]

I am not sure what cable network you have, but FiOS has CW shows offered on their On-Demand, for free even! They also stream directly from their website (which that might be a link for, but FiOS also had their own on-demand of the same show)

Killing off one internet service at a time.

[Barnoid]

Soon, we will never have to leave Google's "intranet" for anything. IMDB, Wipedia, travel, shopping, weather, calculators, dictionnaries, news, now TV program listings...pages providing a particular service get indexed one by one, context integrated, and then obliterated by Google. The new form of embrace, extend and extinguish, apparently.

This is not a new, but a very worrying approach Google is taking here. Monopolies have never been good for the consumers.

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[CODiNE]

Their goal is to index all the worlds information. So basically the whole internet is their competition in some form.

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[sydbarrett74]

IMDB is owned by Amazon, not Google. (Citation. [wikipedia.org])

What?

[Livius]

If I'm not actually looking for a TV listing (and there are perfectly good sites dedicated to that which I already have bookmarked), then showing TV listing in the search results means the search algorithm is broken.

Stop trying to (unsuccessfully) guess what I want and show me the results I'm telling you I want. By now we've all used Google and we know how it works.

Opposite of searching

[Livius]

Unless I'm looking for TV listings if Google returns TV listings it means the search algorithm is broken. There are websites which catalogue them just fine, and I have them bookmarked. It's not as though TV listings are hard to find or require clever algorithms.

Stop trying to guess what I want - we've all used by Google by now, if I want TV listings I will look for them. I'm not a child so don't assume what I ask for in the search somehow isn't what I'm really looking for.

Just one Idea

[the_other_one]

Could Google export results for loading with xmltv?

That's just fucking great.

[jenningsthecat]

Google's search results are getting worse and worse all the time. I have to work harder and harder to exclude all the crap that Google deludes itself into thinking is relevant, including their simply awful ideas on suitable synonyms for various search terms. Now, along with all that crap, if I search for 'Malcolm X', I'll probably get to wade through TV listings for 'Malcolm in the Middle' reruns. Out-fucking-standing, Googletards!

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[Gravis Zero]

you seem awfully upset for someone who can choose to use another search engine.

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[whoozwah]

The only instance I know of where people actually watch something live on TV outside of news and sports is Game of Thrones. There are so many fans of it that will spoil it for you on Monday morning that if you watch it at all you pretty much have to watch it live or have it spoiled for you.

Um... wow?

[wonkey_monkey]

Google Search Will Soon Include Live TV Listings

Uh, okay, I guess that's news...

Cool!

[sabbede]

There have been more than a few times that this would have been handy for me. Much much better than what I had to do before, which was going to different network and station websites to find their schedules.

Do people even watch live TV?

[Tighe_L]

I haven't in years. Everything is streaming now.

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[netsavior]

live TV has a monopoly on Sports. From what I can tell that is the only reason people still subscribe to abusive cable companies.

meh.

[tverbeek]

Between TiVo and now Netflix and Hulu, I haven't watched live TV on a regular basis since around the time Google was founded.