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Google's New Click-to-Call Service
teknopagan writes "Google has debuted a new service called Click-to-Call, in which they will connect you by phone to any of their advertisers. You click a phone icon next to the ad, enter your phone number, and Google calls you and connects you for free to the advertiser."
are they recording the call as well?
Does anyone have an example of a link that shows this? I've tried googling IBM, business, computer...I cant find where this mythical phone icon is I should be looking for.
True... often I use the web because it's much more efficient than trying to talk to someone who doesn't know what they are talking about.
On the other hand, one thing I hate about calling a business is that I have to wait on hold for a very long time. Wouldn't it make more sense for me to give them my phone number, and then they can call me when they have a rep available? I'll be in my office all day... and typically I don't get as many calls as they do, so when they call I probably won't be busy. It just makes sense.
And besides, if I'm thinking about buying a product, and then I have to wait on hold, I'll probably give up and not buy it. If, on the other hand, I can just type in my number and wait for the vendor to get hold of me, then it's much more likely to work out for everyone (me and vendor). I know in the past I've done this before with some companies. They have a web form, you enter the info, and a short while later you get a phone call from someone (who has presumably read your question/request and is ready with an answer/offer). Google is formalizing this system, making it a snap to put customers in touch with companies.
In short, I think it's a good idea.
I must say...Google continues to astound me. Continually they offer services which rewrite the rulebook. They are moving forward into new areas while others are simply wading and reacting, hoping to catch crumbs and turn them into silver while Google is reaping a harvest of diamonds and platinum. There is a reason google's tock just broke 400 and flew past it. And there is a reason they are hiring teh greatest minds in our country.
I for one welcome our new search engine overlords...who knew?
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If I were designing the system, the service would call you first and when you answered, it would say "This is Google Click-to-call. Press 1 to connect to the advertiser, press 2 if you didn't make this request". If you pressed 2, it would blacklist the number for a while.
The biggest bummer for some advertisers is that I doubt that it'll work for callers behind a phone system and without a direct number. The callback number will just go to a receptionist or to IVR (auto-attendant) greeting. There goes much of B2B market.
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Because they will be building a phone book. Actually they will be building a huge personal profile, that just happens to include your phone number.
Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Their FAQ doesn't allay my fears much, either:
3. Is this just a way for Google to track me?
No. We take your privacy very seriously.... In addition, we retain your information (including your phone number, date, time, and call length) only temporarily. It will be deleted from our servers after a period reasonably necessary to operate, audit, and evaluate the service.
Okay, so your number will be deleted after they've "evaluated" the service... Sounds good. Except that this is coming from the company that keeps their new projects in "beta" for, like, aeons.
In summary... all our phone number are belong to Google. Until they "evaluate" the service, of course.
Writerati
Busy day for Google?
The Mysan website announces the new Google Space for London's Heathrow Airport. From the article: "A half of British passengers surveyed said they had nothing better to do in airport terminals than eat, drink and shop. [...] To answer this demand, on Thursday 24 November, Google is launching Google Space at Heathrows Terminal One. Google Space is a laboratory comprising Google pods, which travellers can access for free once through security to log onto the Internet, check their mail and use Google tools to find out about their destination."
Animoog.org
Mod parent up please, the question about the Do Not Call bill is an excellent one, especially considering the potential for abuse.
Any thoughts? I can't honestly see an easy way to prevent this from being abused easily.
SB
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Sweet! Now I'm just waiting for someone write some bots to connect advertisers to EACH OTHER! Phone DoS!
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I used to work for a small data switching telco (which was later bought up by a larger company, and 90% of us were fired or left within 3 months). Anyhow, we had a private fork of Asterisk for our use. I and 3 others spent a fair amount of time trying to deal with the stability/scalability issues. We tried getting our changes merged back into the official version, but there were a number of key architectural changes that need to be made, and Mark Spencer was a complete asshole. We thought of releasing our own fork, but we didn't want to deal with supporting it (plus, it was a competetive advantage not to). I wish I had released the patches, at least, if only because I'm bitter over being fired :)
Maybe I'm just easily excitable but that sounds like a neat idea. Cross-license with ebay and skype, flavor with paypal, and you can call from your computer and buy stuff without picking up the phone or even pulling out your credit card to read out the numbers or giving your address.
Yea it's consumerism and capitalistic BS, but who wouldn't give a pinky finger to have the rights to the tech and marketing concept?
The purpose of not listing the number is so that google can charge the advertiser for this service. Also it acts as a protection against scammers who use your phone number as a way to ID you for nefarious purposes. If all you want to ask is "can your product do X?" you perhaps don't want them to know all of your identification.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
They are quite imaginative in their approach to advertising. I wonder if the advertiser will have to pay Google each time someone is connected via phone (for other than phone charges), and whether, as an advertiser, you can limit the number of phone calls that will take place (to, say, five per hour), in case you're just a small business without hundreds of operators standing by.
I advertise through google, and they have my Cell number on record. The last thing I want is to have everybody on the internet start "automatically" calling me on it!
I hope that this feature is not enabled by default.
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I can't say I quite follow Google's logic here. Google is already doing enough things "on their dime", without paying for searchers to call advertisers. What are they, a phone company now? I can only think of a few reasons you'd want to call an advertiser, and any decent company will typically have a 1-800 number. Even if they don't, unlimited long distance either through your local phone company or your mobile carrier is pretty common.
Furthermore, this is going to cost the companies regardless. Sure, they want people to call them up and say "Advertise to me!", and this may make Google an even more attractive place to put an ad... but somebody has to man the phones. I don't think you want to call up such a number only to get a pre-recorded message. A private "click to email" where google blocks your address would have made a lot more sense to me.
About the only real use I can think of is small time advertisers, think auctions...
Google connects you to the advertiser and you get the usual recorded announcement: "Please hold for the next available operator. Due to the high volume of calls this may take some time. For faster service please visit our website."
Not every company has a toll-free number. So now you can talk on the phone with them and not pay long distance charges.
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