Going to the movies this weekend? We’re now making it easier for you to make plans while you’re on the go. 

When deciding what movie to watch, you usually consider the movie itself along with the showtimes and theater options. With our latest update rolling out today, you can quickly compare movies by the factors you care most about—ratings, showtimes, theater location and more—all from the same view. And just as before, you can easily buy your tickets in advance; just click on a showtime to purchase a ticket.

If you have a favorite theater, you can check out what’s playing by location, and narrow your search with filters:

To try this out, search for “showtimes,” “movies” or movie times in your city such as “Mountain View showtimes.” This feature is available on Google Search in mobile browsers and in the Google app for Android, in the U.S. and India in Hindi and English. It will come to the Google app for iOS soon.

So what movie is it going to be?

When we started Google Images, we focused on making it easy to find photos and images from across the web. But as the web evolved and mobile devices changed the way people search, the way people use Google Images has changed too. Most people now use Google Images to find more information about a topic, and to help them communicate and express themselves—case in point, we see millions of searches for GIFs every day. We’ve continued to evolve Google Images to meet both of these needs, and today we’re bringing GIFs more closely into the fold by acquiring Tenor, a GIF platform for Android, iOS and desktop.

With their deep library of content, Tenor surfaces the right GIFs in the moment so you can find the one that matches your mood. Tenor will help us do this more effectively in Google Images as well as other products that use GIFs, like Gboard.

Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand, and we're looking forward to investing in their technology and relationships with content and API partners. So whether you’re using the Tenor keyboard or one of our other products, you can expect to see much more of this in your future:

GIF on!

When we started Google Images, we focused on making it easy to find photos and images from across the web. But as the web evolved and mobile devices changed the way people search, the way people use Google Images has changed too. Most people now use Google Images to find more information about a topic, and to help them communicate and express themselves—case in point, we see millions of searches for GIFs every day. We’ve continued to evolve Google Images to meet both of these needs, and today we’re bringing GIFs more closely into the fold by acquiring Tenor, a GIF platform for Android, iOS and desktop.

With their deep library of content, Tenor surfaces the right GIFs in the moment so you can find the one that matches your mood. Tenor will help us do this more effectively in Google Images as well as other products that use GIFs, like Gboard.

Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand, and we're looking forward to investing in their technology and relationships with content and API partners. So whether you’re using the Tenor keyboard or one of our other products, you can expect to see much more of this in your future:

GIF on!

Springtime means new beginnings, and that seems to be the case for Ringo Starr and Cynthia Nixon who made their foray into knighthood and state politics this week. But they’re not the only ones who captured people’s attention in Search this week. Here’s a look at the top trends, thanks to data from Google News Lab.

Finding answers in Austin

The question on many people’s minds—“who was the Austin bomber?”—was answered early Wednesday morning when law enforcement identified Mark Conditt as the man behind the string of exploding  packages. San Antonio, Waco-Temple-Bryan, Victoria and San Angelo were among the top metros looking for more information on the Austin bomber.

It’s finally spring...kinda

“Is today the first day of spring?” was the top trending question across the east coast this week as residents braced for a not-so-warm welcome to the new season. Storm Toby brought a wintery mix of snow, sleet and gusty winds on Wednesday and had people in DC, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts searching for information on flight cancellations. Spring officially sprung on Tuesday, in case you didn’t know!

Starry Knight

“Don’t pass me by”—Sir Richard “Ringo Starr” Starkey is the latest member of the Beatles to be knighted. Prince William performed the ceremony on Tuesday, 21 years after the other surviving Beatle, Paul McCartney, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Despite search interest in “Ringo Starr” spiking 400+ percent higher than “Paul McCartney,” John Lennon was the most searched band member of the week. It’s a battle of the Beatles!

Politics in the City

Miranda Hobbes fans unite: Cynthia Nixon is running for Governor of New York. Best known for her role in the hit HBO series “Sex in the City,” Nixon is taking her talents off screen and into the ballot box. She’ll challenge current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for the seat—and is already off to the races, with search interest in “Cynthia Nixon” spiking over 1,300 percent of “Andrew Cuomo” on Monday. Guess Carrie Bradshaw isn’t the only leading lady in town!

The boy with the phoenix tattoo

Elephants, flowers, lions and butterflies were among the most searched tattoo designs this week, but it’s Ben Affleck’s colorful ink that has everyone talking. The actor was caught showing off his back tattoo while on a beach in Hawaii. Fans and tattoo artists alike have their opinions about the massive phoenix rising from the ashes, so much so that search interest “Ben Affleck tattoo” was more than 1,200 percent higher than interest in “Ben Affleck movie.” But the top trending question remains, “is Ben Affleck’s tattoo real?” Dun, dun, dun.

People come to Google looking for information they can trust, and that information often comes from the reporting of journalists and news organizations around the world. And while the demand for quality journalism is as high as it’s ever been, the business of journalism is under pressure, as publications around the world face challenges from an industry-wide transition to digital.

That matters deeply to Google. After all, our mission to build a more informed world is inherently tied to the reporting of journalists and news organizations. Our shared mission also reflects shared business interests. Platforms like Search and YouTube depend on a healthy ecosystem of publishers producing great digital content. That’s why it’s so important to us that we help you drive sustainable revenue and businesses. Last year, we paid $12.6 billion to partners and we drove 10 billion clicks a month to publishers’ websites for free. 

It’s also why over the years, we’ve worked closely with the news industry to address key challenges. We worked with the industry to launch the open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to improve the mobile web, YouTube Player for Publishers to simplify video distribution and reduce costs, Flexible Sampling to help with discovery of news content on Google, Google News Lab to provide newsrooms with trainings and editorial partnerships, and the Digital News Initiative to drive innovation in the European news industry.

We invested a lot time and energy in these collaborations. But the hard truth is—all of this might not be enough. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish what’s true (and not true) online. Business models for journalism continue to change drastically. The rapid evolution of technology is challenging all institutions, including the news industry—to keep pace. 

We need to do more. That’s why we’re launching the Google News Initiative (GNI), our effort to help journalism thrive in the digital age. The GNI signifies a major milestone in Google’s 15-year commitment to the news industry, and will bring together everything we do in collaboration with the industry—across products, partnerships, and programs—to help build a stronger future for news.

The GNI will build on these efforts and deepen our commitment to a news industry facing dramatic shifts in how journalism is created, consumed, and paid for. It’s focused on three objectives: 

• Elevate and strengthen quality journalism  
  
• Evolve business models to drive sustainable growth
  
• Empower news organizations through technological innovation
  

Elevate and strengthen quality journalism

Over the past few years, we’ve worked with publishers to elevate accurate, quality content and stem the flow of misinformation and disinformation.

On our own platforms, we’re focused on combating misinformation during breaking news situations.  Bad actors often target breaking news on Google platforms, increasing the likelihood that people are exposed to inaccurate content. So we’ve trained our systems to recognize these events and adjust our signals toward more authoritative content. There are comparable challenges on YouTube, and we’re taking a similar approach, highlighting relevant content from verified news sources in a “Top News” shelf.

But we’re also working directly with news organizations to combat misinformation. We’re launching the Disinfo Lab alongside the First Draft to combat mis- and disinformation during elections and breaking news moments. Finally, to help consumers distinguish fact from fiction online,  we’re teaming up with the Poynter Institute, Stanford University, and the Local Media Association to launch MediaWise, a U.S. project designed to improve digital information literacy for young consumers.

Evolve business models to drive sustainable growth

Over the last decade, we’ve worked closely with news organizations to grow their digital advertising revenue. In just the past few years, we’ve applied our advanced machine learning expertise to automatically surface key insights about revenue opportunities (generating recommendations worth over $300 million in additional revenue) and supported the creation of faster, better ad experiences for the mobile web through AMP and native ads.

But consumers are willing to pay for digital news content, creating an opportunity to expand beyond ad revenue. Today we’re delivering on avision outlined last year to enable publishers to diversify their revenue streams. We’re excited to launch Subscribe with Google, a way for people to easily subscribe to various news outlets, helping publishers engage readers across Google and the web. Our goal with Subscribe with Google is to ease the subscription process to get more readers consuming publishers’ journalism, as quickly as possible.   

In October, at our Partner Leadership Summit, we told publishers about how we’re experimenting with ways to grow their subscriptions using Google data, machine learning, and DoubleClick infrastructure. We’re now in the early stages of testing a “Propensity to Subscribe” signal based on machine learning models in DoubleClick to make it easier for publishers to recognize potential subscribers, and to present them the right offer at the right time.

Of course, not every publication has the resources to dedicate a team to collect, analyze and understand their user data. News Consumer Insights, our new dashboard built on top of Google Analytics, will help news organizations of all sizes understand and segment their audiences with a subscriptions strategy in mind. At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, this project led to a 150 percent increase in pageviews to their Subscribe pages and a month-over-month tripling of new digital subscription purchases.

Empower news organizations through technological innovation

We work with news organizations around the world to develop and deploy technology that improves newsroom efficiency, creates enriching storytelling experiences, and protects journalists from cyber attacks around the world.  

For example, we’re using our natural language processing API to help Hearst Newspapers sort, label and categorize more than 3,000 articles every day. We’ve also workedwith the South China Morning Post to use Google Earth to create immersive VR experiences that show the evolution of Hong Kong throughout history. With AMP Stories, which is now in beta, publishers can combine the speed of AMP with the rich, immersive storytelling of the open web. This is just the beginning. We want to continue working closely with publishers to experiment on new ways they can reach audiences and produce impactful storytelling.

Finally, we’re also launching today Outline, an open-source tool from Jigsaw that lets news organizations provide journalists more secure access to the internet. Outline makes it easy for news organizations to set up their own VPN on a private server—no tech savvy required.

Our commitment

Over the next three years, we’re committing $300 million toward meeting these goals. We’re also deepening our commitment to building products that address the news industry’s most urgent needs. In the past, we’ve done this by working closely alongside the industry in product working groups, resulting in projects like AMP and the DNI. We’ll be expanding that model globally.

The commitments we’re making through the Google News Initiative demonstrate that news and quality journalism is a top priority for Google. We know that success can only be achieved by working together, and we look forward to collaborating with the news industry to build a stronger future for journalism.

Sifting through the week’s news can feel like sinking into a black hole. Luckily, we have some standout trends this week, gathered with data from Google News Lab. They start with a tribute to legendary physicist and black hole escape artist Stephen Hawking, who passed away Wednesday at age 76.

“Look up”
Stephen Hawking’s intelligence was a cut above the rest, in life and in Search: interest in “Stephen Hawking IQ” was 170 percent higher than “Stephen Hawking quote” over the past week. But of his many memorable quotes, here’s the most searched: “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Turbulent times
“What happened on United Airlines?” was a trending question this week. The company faced scrutiny after a French bulldog—the second most searched dog breed this week—suffocated in an overhead compartment and a pet German Shepherd was accidentally shipped to Japan. For those searching for canine breeds this week, Rhodesian Ridgebacks were top dog.

A cue from teens
Search interest in “walkout” has reached an all-time high in the U.S. this month. On Wednesday, students around the country participated in a walkout to call on elected officials to take action on gun laws—the top cities searching for “walkout” were Charlottesville, VA, Fort Smith, AR, and Madison, WI.

It’s bracket season 
March Madness is in full swing, especially for North Carolina, Duke and Kentucky fans, whose teams have been the most searched in the past week. The top-searched celebrity brackets are from basketball commentator Jay Bilas, former President Barack Obama, and Warren Buffett. And the winner is anyone’s guess: Michigan State, favored by both Bilas and Obama, wasn’t among the top 10 teams being searched this week.

Go green
Saturday marks St. Patrick’s Day and, in true spirit, corned beef and cabbage is the top trending St. Patrick’s Day recipe this week, followed by … jello shots ?. If you’re feeling lucky, you might be among those searching for lucky horseshoes, lucky cats and lucky clovers (the top searched “lucky” items in the past week). And although New York has the biggest parade and Boston the biggest reputation, the top states searching for the holiday are Connecticut, Kansas, and Delaware. Illinois, where Chicagoans annually dye their river green, comes in at number four.

People around the world use Google Images to find visual information online. Whether you’re searching for ideas for your next baking project, how to tie shoelaces so they stay put, or tips on the proper form for doing a plank, scanning image results can be much more helpful than scanning text. Today, we’re sharing more about new changes to Google Images to provide even better visual discovery with more context on the image results page.

By adding more context around images, results can become much more useful. Last year we started showing badges (like “recipe” or “product”) on certain results to aid in the discovery process. Since then, we’ve also added the website’s domain URL for each result to show you where the image is coming from.

This week we’re adding captions to image results, showing you the title of the web page where each image is published. This extra piece of information gives you  more context so you can easily find out what the image is about and whether the website would contain more relevant content for your needs. Here’s how it looks:

In this example, the image results give you visual confirmation that you found the right fruit, but captions make results instantly more useful with additional context. For instance, you can learn that this fruit is called carambola or starfruit, and that it’s popular in China. This also helps you choose the result page to click and explore further.

This update underscores our ongoing goal to make Google Images an ever more useful tool to discover and explore more information from the web. Image captions are starting to roll out globally this week on the Google app (Android and iOS) and on mobile browsers.

The world learned about new words—whether from Merriam-Webster or Frances McDormand— this week. Here are a few of the week’s top-searched trends (with data from the Google News Lab):

The words of our generation:“Dumpster fire,” once relegated to internet-speak, has made it into the official lexicon—one of 850 new words that Merriam-Webster added to the dictionary—and was up 3,200 percent in Search. Embiggen (a word invented by “The Simpsons,” that means “to get bigger”) embiggened with a 2,000 percent spike in search interest, while mansplain went up 500 percent.

First woman to…“land a triple axel” and “go to MIT.” These are the top two rising searches over the past year for women who have broken barriers, and with International Women’s Day this week, searches about women continued. Frances McDormand, Jennifer Lawrence and Tiffany Haddish were the leading ladies in Search, and across the world, top searches for “gender equality” came from Nicaragua, Mexico and Sweden.

Say that one more time:After Frances McDormand’s speech at the Oscars, “inclusion rider” became a breakout search term (meaning there was a tremendous increase in search interest, possibly reflecting a term that had few, if any, prior searches). Since the term was relatively unknown, some people heard “inclusion writer,” which also saw a search increase (only 450 percent less than the correct term, “inclusion rider”).

Sweet tooth: M&M’s are mixing it up with new flavors—Crunchy Espresso, Crunchy Raspberry, and Crunchy Mint. Despite these new additions, “Neapolitan”—another limited-edition flavor—was the top-searched M&M flavor this week, and M&M-thusiasts are searching for recipes for M&M cookie, M&M cookie with peanut butter, and M&M cake.

Putting Nikumaroro on the map:Search interest for “Pacific Island of Nikumaroro” soared 4,600 percent after new forensic analysis of bones found there belong to Amelia Earhart.