Fun Friday: 1-800-Google

Filed in archive Technology on April 13, 2007

Well, not exactly. The full phone number is 1-800-GOOG-411. No longer content with ruling the Internet, Google is bringing its well-known search to the offline world and a phone near you.

Google Voice Local Search service is toll-free, automated, experimental, and uses voice recognition. It can send a text message with results to your phone. The neatest part is that it will connect your phone call to a selected business.

I tried it out. The service has far to go to be as effective as a human operator. The voice recognition is great when it works but often fails. Search is crude, allowing you to specify a city and then a business name or category. Categories can be narrowed by intersection or zip code. It works best if you know the business name and there is only one office in a city.