You can now purchase movie tickets with the help of Google Assistant

Thanks to a collaboration with Fandango, Google Assistant now helps movie loving mobile users purchase their movie tickets. Indeed, by way of a new Action on the virtual assistant service, cinephiles can just tell Google Assistant to get their tickets to any theater anywhere (okay, almost -- the Fandango feature on Google Assistant lets people buy movie tickets on over 30,000 cinemas across the United States).

Google Assistant and Fandango also had the tongue in cheek pop culture driven wit to reveal their partnership on May the Fourth, most popularly known the world over as Star Wars Day. It just so happens that this date also marks the first day movie tickets for the highly awaited Star Wars spin off -- Solo: A Star Wars Story -- are made available for sale.

Just to be clear, mobile users can buy movie tickets on any smartphone or connected device that comes with the Google Assistant feature. This means that apart from certain Android powered mobile devices, the list of compatible machines also includes smart speakers like Google Home, TVs, and headphones, just to mention a handful.

But wait -- what about Apple made devices? The functionality is not supported on iOS powered mobile devices as of now, but the Fandango movie ticket feature should start to roll out on the Google Assistant on iPhones before the end of this year. Moreover, users do not have to download and install a separate mobile app.

As pointed out by Paul Yanover, the president of Fandango, the company has always been open to the idea of embracing new technology that aims to improve the ticketing process for today’s moviegoers. As a matter of fact, Fandango has developed a number of solutions that can work on mobile devices, social media, artificial intelligence bots, and even voice controlled software platforms. So it only seems natural for the firm to join forces with a leading tech giant like Google, especially in taking full advantage of the capabilities of the Google Assistant feature in improving the movie experience of Android users everywhere.

According to Lilian Rincon, the product management director of the Google Assistant team at Google, the tie up with Fandango allows Google Assistant to expand its current catalog of abilities, and what better way to begin helping Android users purchase movie tickets than during the start of the busy summer movie season, kicked off, of course, by one of the most anticipated movies of the year, Solo: A Star Wars Story, the origin story of everybody’s favorite Kessel running interstellar smuggler.