Google has redesigned its Movies page on YouTube to show off its ever-growing collection of Indian movies with more style, according to an announcement on the official Google India blog.
The company announced that the video sharing website was now playing host to over 1,500 movies from across India, most being from Bollywood, but some in other regional languages as well. The new design of the Movies page (accessible to those outside India through one of these two links) is meant to better show off this collection and make finding movies easier.
The page shows a bunch of featured movies and new releases at the top and a dynamically updated list of top films (based on number of recent favourites) in the sidebar and the rest of the page is dedicated to a categorised display of titles based on their genres. The website now also shows similar movies and staff picks when looking at a movie’s details.
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Despite the impressive-sounding number of 1,500 titles, however, we found that a good percentage of the movies on display on the front page are B-grade titles that would have very limited appeal. The categorisation also leaves much to be desired, with several movies appearing twice in the same category and others that are filed under wildly unrelated genres.
Shah Rukh Khan fans will probably find much to like about this page, as the top five slots in the Top Films list are occupied by recent and classic hits of the Bollywood superstar. Not that it is surprising, given Google’s recent partnerships with the actor which saw him participate in live Hangouts with fans on Google+ in exchange for heavy promotion of his movie on YouTube.
This is the latest in a string of moves that YouTube has made to try to establish itself as a popular movie-viewing destination in India. The company brought its YouTube Partner Program to Indian shores last month and started showing two featured movies per month on its BoxOffice channel after having launched it in June this year.
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