I am a creature of habit. Every Friday, I head to the multiplex. Sometimes it's to fulfill my professional duty as a film critic, sometimes it's to catch up with a movie someone else recommended I see, but most often it's for the pure pleasure of watching a movie on a big screen with an audience.

To decide where and what to see, usually I type "movie: Dallas, TX" into Google. Up until today, that search spec (substitute your city and state or zip code) pulled up an alphabetical list of local movie theaters, with the movies playing at each theater listed alphabetically along with showtimes. It's a very quick, easy, and convenient way to decide where I want to spend my evening. Today, though, I noticed that typing "movie: Dallas, TX" displays the search results in order of "movie popularity."

You can still change the results so they display in order of "theater distance," but it made me wonder how other people decide what movie(s) to watch. I've watched gangs of people head into a theater, asking each other "What is this movie?" Sometimes the bantering goes on while waiting in the ticket line ("what do you want to see?"), sometimes in the lobby after tickets have been purchased. How about you? Do you pick one movie in advance, and then look for the most convenient location and showtime? What if it's sold out, or traffic delays keep you from arriving in time -- do you just wait for the next showing, even if you have to wait two hours? Or do you just head to your favorite theater and pick the best of what's available?

Once again, it seems search titan Google is being asked to look into itself a little more closely. When Google bought YouTube in October, 2006, several big Hollywood players -- most notably Viacom -- asked Google to take a little more care in the presentation of copyrighted material. Now, says the Hollywood Reporter, an open letter to lawmakers released Wednesday sees the independent watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center alleging that Google's servers and services are still a too-convenient haven for pirates.

The math is pretty compelling -- an NLPC review of Google conducted between Sept. 10th and 18th found over 300 apparently pirated films that had been viewed some 22 million times. Multiply 22 million by an average ticket price of $10, and you're talking some serious money. Extrapolate those 10 days into a full year, and you're looking at a sum of 8 billion dollars -- that exceeds Google's annual revenue of 7.5 billion and is four times their 2 billion dollar profit.

It'd be easy to see this as yet another veiled swipe at the internet's cavalier attitude towards intellectual property by big studios -- except for the fact that the NLPC is a wholly independent group with no apparent ties to the film industry. For it's part, Google claims that any and all copyrighted material found on their sites and services illegally is removed as soon as a copyright holder makes their displeasure known. However, the NLPC's Ken Boehm says that's not good enough: "We are hoping to shame Google into doing something. What they are doing is inexcusable corporate behavior. When big companies do something unethical, it sends a message to everyone else that it's OK." Google also claims to be working on better content filtering that they hope to unveil as soon as possible.

This summer seemed like the end of an era for a lot of the big franchises. Sure, some might be back, but I just don't think they'll be the same. For one of the last big summer releases, The Bourne Ultimatum, Universal has launched an online game, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It was announced that studio has teamed with Google for a promotional game with the somewhat lame title The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google. Players try to hunt down the elusive rouge agent, and at the same time the game takes you on a tour of You Tube, Google Maps and web searches. Participants will have to answer trivia, and find random clues buried on the net to compete for the grand prize of a 2008 Touareg 2.

So far, the marketing for the movie has been pretty typical; just a few posters and a couple of trailers, and of course the Bourne game is another attempt to fully integrate the web as a way of engineering some buzz. You can't blame the studio for wanting to cash in on a little hype, especially when you consider all the hoopla over those Cloverfield sites. The highly anticipated final film -- and it turns out it will be the final one in the series -- is bringing Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, and Chris Cooper back for one last hurrah. Back in June, Jennifer had reported that instead of going back for more Bourne after this one, Damon was going to be working on the film version of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran with Bourne director Paul Greengrass. Bourne doesn't open for a few more weeks, so if you can't wait until August 3rd and you have a way with Google, you could always take a crack at winning that car.

Ah, YouTube we hardly knew ye. The video upload site grew rapidly into a site big and bad enough to make Google sit up and take notice to the tune of a $1.65 billion buyout last month, largely because YouTube kind of overlooked the whole issue of who actually owned the stuff people were uploading to their site. Hence, users would upload the funniest bits from shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report -- the kind of stuff people actually want to watch -- in addition to the plethora of videos like that fascinating footage of ripping off a nasty fungal-infected toenail, or a banana spider munching a grub (okay, that one was actually kinda cool). Now that Google and its deep pockets are in the game, though, the rules are changing.

What's the best way to give your own flagging video distribution a shot in the arm? Buy the most popular one on the planet. Google announced today that it was buying the popular online video sharing service YouTube for a cool $1.65 billion dollars in stock -- really nice payday for a company that hasn't even turned two yet.

YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the planet, breaking into the top ten with sites like Yahoo, MySpace, and of course -- Google. Earlier this summer, it was reported that YouTube was serving upwards of 100 million videos a day, with 65,000 new ones uploaded by users every day. That number will surely climb as they have more money and server space available to them through Google. Google's own GoogleVideo service tried to compete with YouTube, adopting a similar look and feel, but they never could match the popularity of the upstart company. If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

Now, why should movie lovers pay attention? With the announcements of both Apple's iTunes movies, and Amazon's Unbox services, mainstream movie distribution on the web has become something to start thinking seriously about -- ya know, it's not just speculation around the water cooler anymore. While there are other sites on the web that offer movie downloads, both Apple and Amazon have been the first mainstream sites to offer them in an easy-to-understand and affordable format. Google seems to be setting the stage for their own effort in the same arena.

Slate writer Edward Jay Epstein gives his predictions on what is going to happen in the movie industry this year. Including:

• The window between theatrical release and DVD release will get shorter and shorter.
• The Blu-Ray DVD format taking over.
• Free Google Wi-Fi spreading to major cities.

I'd like to make some of my own:

• Even if the studio has to tie his legs and feet, Tom Cruise will not jump up and down on any couches in 2006.
• Many people will go see that DaVinci Code movie.
• Those lame ass ads and trivia questions will continue to annoy moviegoers before the coming attractions.

Over the past month, Google has registered several domains with film-related names, among them things like Googlemoviereviews.com and Googleshowtime.com. While claiming the domain names don't necessarily mean that there are specific plans afoot, given Google's recent focus on movie information, it's not outrageous to assume there are more features in the works. The link below offers some thoughtful speculation on where Google could be going with this -- a totally independent site, for example, to rival Moviefone?

Personally, I'm still adjusting to the innovations they put in place back in February. It blows my mind that I can put my zip code and a movie title into my cell phone and get showtimes and locations.  I mean, holy freaking cow.  Technology totally rules! [via TUAW]