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GOOG-411's "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound Backstory

Posted by kdawson on from the party-to-whom-i'm-speaking dept.

Chris Albrecht writes "The bippedy-bippedy-bippedy sound you hear when using 1-800-GOOG-411 is actually a senior voice designer at Google. (Here's the sound.) The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, the voice of GOOG-411 talks about how he came up with it, how important that sound is, and how people now ask him to 'perform' it."

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If you don't know what this is about by pbhj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At least someone realises that we're not all Americans.

  2. What the Flip? by camperdave · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm fairly sure others will join me in asking: What is GOOG-411'?
    Why do they have a "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound?
    Why would I want to know the Backstory?
    How is this in any way important, newsworthy, or even interesting?

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  3. Re:If you don't know what this is about by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Um, why has someone modded the parent redundant? Actually it is a very valid point. The summary does a poor job of explaining what on earth this article is about if you are not American. My guess is that hardly anyone outside the US knew what this was about before the previous poster linked the article explaining it.

    It seems on topic and valid to me to point this failing out the to the editor of the article. It is good that people remember Slashdot reaches every country everywhere (um, except N. Korea and maybe China -- it's probably secretly censored and monitored by the UK too, and archived by the Germans). Remember folks, those tubes are trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific too.

    Obviously, in South Korea, only old people read Slashdot.