Photo by Mike Blumenthal. Used with permission. Mike Blumenthal took a picture of a billboard ad in upstate New York for Google's free directory assistance alternative, Goog411. This is interesting and amusing for a number of reasons. The company, which has historically not marketed its products (although that is changing), is using a very traditional ad medium to promote its non-traditional local voice search offering. However, people will see this when they're driving in their cars, which is one of the expected use cases. Another interesting thing is the location, a relatively obscure r [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

MIT's Technology Review published an interview with Google Director of Research Peter Norvig that explores his (and presumably Google's) thinking about problems in search and "next-generation" search functionality that Google is working on. There's nothing strikingly new in the interview but it's an interesting overview and window into some of the current projects. Among them, Norvig emphasizes speech recognition and processing, both in mobile (i.e., Goog411) and hypothetically on the desktop. He also discusses getting users to provide more information ("natural language") or interact more w [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Labs | Google: Mobile | Google: User Interface | Google: Voice Search | Google: Web Search | Search Resources | Stats: Search Behavior

Google's free directory assistance/voice search offering 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) has added a "map it" feature. Users can say "map it" after receiving the desired listing and get a text message with a link to a map (which opens a WAP browser). I tested the feature a couple of times , and it worked very easily. Google draws upon its Google Maps database to serve text-to-speech listings -- and now maps -- to Goog411 callers. Google's competitors include Jingle Networks' 1-800-Free411, AT&T's 1-800-YellowPages and several others. Jingle Networks was recently awarded a patent for contextu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Voice Search

The Google Lat Long Blog promotes Google's free voice-based local search (free directory assistance) product: Goog411. The post also cites a new, related Google Group, similar to the Yahoo Suggestions Board, and a related, suggestions email address. Here's our original post on Goog411 from launch earlier this year. Google was very cautious and tentative about the positioning of the service when it launched. This suggests to me that it is getting positive feedback and seeing usage gains. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Voice Search

Tim O'Reilly has an interesting post that went up last Friday on Google's potential motivation in rolling out Goog411. The obvious answer to the question "Why is Google doing this?" is mobile voice search and directory assistance ($13 billion in annual revenue per Opus Research). The conventional wisdom, which includes me here, holds that Google wants to offer a mobile search product that taps into existing consumer behavior (i.e., directory assistance) and offers the prospect of advertising -- eventually. Currently 1-800-Free411 is the leader in the ad-supported free directory assistance ma [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

You've heard the rumors. Now you can try the experimental service from Google Labs. Google Voice Local Search is now live and publicly claimed by Google. Greg Sterling will be along to say more either here or in a fresh post. In the meantime, you can call (1-800-GOOG-411) and get local information by talking to your phone, at least in the United States. Microsoft, of course, also has local voice search through the TellMe service it acquired last month. Postscript from Greg: Google's experimental entry into automated voice-based mobile search (free directory assistance [DA]) establishe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines