Bing is making it easier to see all movies playing in theaters around you and their show times right from a search. A new ‘carousel’ will let you see the movies playing in theaters, and scroll through them. Clicking on one of the posters/thumbnails will give you the show times. This feature is also available at the mobile Bing website.
You can try it out by searching for something along the lines of ‘movies in theaters now playing.’ This will take you to the carousel of all the movies in theaters near you. If you search with a specific movie, like ‘Gone Girl,’ you don’t get a carousel, but you still get the show times for ‘Gone Girl.’
I don’t like forced comparisons between Bing and Google, but this is one of those things that Google simply does much better. For example, searching for ‘Gone Girl’ will give you the show times presented in a much easier to read box, and will give you the option to scroll through different days and times. Also, Google has had the carousel for the movies for a while. And while its fine to be ‘inspired,’ Bing should be focusing on improving existing designs, not merely copying.
While it is disappointing that Bing didn’t chose to make a unique and better (or even as good of an) interface, they are catching up with Google in this functionality — I just wouldn’t recommend anyone use it over Google for now. I am happy to see this feature become available on Bing, but Microsoft should take this as constructive criticism and improve it to be better than what Google has to offer right now.
