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Google To Shut Down 411 Service
taco8982 writes "After three years of providing free directory assistance in exchange for voice samples, Google has announced plans to shut down the GOOG-411 service, in order to focus on 'speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.' The service will close on November 12th."
Never even heard of it. I wonder how many dozens of obscure Google services there are out there
San Francisco! GOOG-411?
It seems like smartphones are making voice calls obsolete. GOOG-411 is a victim of http://www.google.com/
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I for one am sad about this. I'm one of those holdouts who still doesn't have a (i|g|smart)phone, so it was nice to be able to call Google up to contact the restaurant I want to get reservations at, or anything like that. I can understand why they canceled it (they get way more voice data from Google Voice, I'm sure), but still, I'm a bit sad.
Maybe I'll finally get a more intelligent phone now...
Nuance and IBM hold so many patents in the voice recognition field it's not even funny. With MS suing Android for things as innocuous as "syncing", I wonder what, if anything, Google is doing to protect or aid handset makers from this type of litigation. As I mentioned before in a previous post, a simple list showing all applicable patents and necessary licenses would help give a heads up to Android device makers.
Used to use this all the time before I got my android. Sure kept my crappy LG phone somewhat relevant.
Goog411 was amazing! No ads, good results. Thankfully I have a smartphone, but there were still times that Goog411 was faster than using my smartphone.
I guess I will go back to 1-800-Free411
The blog says now all you need to do is send a txt message to 466453 (google) with name and city and state.
It's easier that way, at least with a cell phone.
I love Goog-411. I use it at least once a week. While it may be flaky on the voice recognition more than I'd like, it's usually pretty good.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I wonder if there is a way to reprogram the Goog-411 buttons on the cordless phones that have them, such as this http://www.buy.com/prod/thomson-28811fe2-premiere-goog-411-dect-6-0-cordless-phone-1-x-phone/q/sellerid/22539552/loc/111/207514570.html one.
Goog-411 was something that I really enjoyed using and pretty frequently mind you. As long as you don't use speaker-phone (which it will hear itself talking) it was flawless at understanding me no matter how fast I would talk. Don't die Goog-411!! ;_;
but, it worked wonderfully.
Just got a Droid 2 and was transferring my old phone numbers over. I had just transferred the Google 411 number, and then jumped on Slashdot and determined I shouldn't bother!
It was nice to have, even though I suppose it's not as necessary with a smartphone. Still, cheaper than calling 411 on my carrier!
So long and thanks for all the fish!
6d
Goog-8675309
That service was really nifty, especially inthe days of dumb phones. Oh, well. It'll be missed.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
noooooooooooooo! i love this service! =[ damn you, google. whyyy? goog-411 was THE SHIT.
Microsoft still is in the 411 game with Bing 411. Link
1-800-Bing-411
(1-800-246-4411)
I had a bad feeling about Google 411. It used to be one of the options when you called your own Google Voice account -- you pressed 2 to find the number you wanted. Then Google deleted it out of Google Voice without any notification that I ever saw. I use it all the time with my old "dumb" cell phone. It's a great service, and I'll be sad to see it go.
Greg Raven
As long as there's any left, I'll take mine first.
The service stopped working for me a couple months ago.
Exactly. My wife uses GOOG411 all the time while driving. She thinks phone books and address books are obsolete. She's quite verbal and likes small flip phones, so no keyboard or smartphone.
Given her tendency to use $1.29/call 411 services before GOOG411, I think Google ought to target people like me with $5/mo plans.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In other words, google is making it a lot more complicated and inconvenient. My current WinMo phone does this better. Let's compare.
Currently, if I want to reach a company, I use one type of interaction: voice interaction. It goes like this:
1. I tell my phone, "Call GOOG 411." My phone asks me if I want to call "GOOG 411" or whatever and gives me a chance to confirm or correct myself.
2. I ask GOOG 411 for "Company X, Anytown USA"
3. I listen to the results. Google gives me a chance to verify them and correct myself.
4. I say which result I want. Google calls the business for me.
All that without taking my eyes off of what I'm doing (walking, driving, doing the dishes, taking out the trash).
Soon, when I want to reach a company, I'll have to do a more complicated routine:
1. Launch Voice Search (VS for short).
2. Ask for "Company X, Anytown USA."
3. Voice Search terminates.
4. To review the results on the screen, I have to take my eyes off what I am doing.
5. If they're incorrect, I'm out of luck. My current VS session has ended and I need to start over.
6. Assuming I found what I wanted, I try to remember the phone number of the business I want to reach.
7. I launch Voice Actions (VA for short).
8. I tell Voice Actions to dial the ten digit number I've hopefully remembered.
9. VA doesn't ask me if it understood me correctly. I watch the screen to see if has. If VA got it wrong, I have to launch VA again.
This is ridiculous. Notice how Google has made me take twice as many steps to reach a business. Notice how Google is forcing me to mix three types of interaction: -Voice interaction to initiate search and make the call
-Screen viewing to check the results
-Touch interaction to scroll through the results
What a step back in functionality this is! I hope Google is paying attention and fixes this. Until they do, I have good reason to stick with my WinMo phone. It does hands-free stuff better.
I was a big fan of GOOG-411. I can't say I used it very much, but comparing it against 411, it won hands down, especially on the price aspect.
Now that google has got all the free data they need, they can shut down the service and encourage people to buy more smartphones. It's really a shame, but not unexpected from any company; I was hoping for better from google.
Figures, just after I convinced my father to stop using the telco 411 (and paying the $$$) and to use GOOG-411.
I was in a store recently, and my eye caught a cheap DECT phone, and I was thinking of buying it, but decided I should research DECT first. Turns out it has weak encryption which has already been broken. So, you should just throw that phone away anyhow. *grin* Well, at least, don't use it for any sensitive communications.
Unforunately, GSM was recently 'broken' too, so there doesn't seem to be too much left in the way of secure wireless comms - maybe some sort of VoIP with TLS or AES crypto or something (seems like I remember hearing about a VoIP encapsulation scheme based on OpenPGP - I'll have to look into that.
Still, the consumer electronics industry needs to really update their encryption standards.
What do you think about open sourcing that voice recognition software? Goodness know OS needs it.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I set it up on customers phone systems when they didn't want to pay for real 411 service. Dialing 411 or any other such directory assistance number would actually dial the 1800 number to google 411... oh well...
Google is definitely "King of the Beta"
I think what a lot of people are missing is that this was never intended to be a continuing or for-profit service for Google. They *only* set this service up to collect voice data to improve speech recognition.
Now that they have the data they needed, they're closing it down.
Sounds pretty crystal clear to me.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Nooooooo! I use this frequently. Come Nov., I'll have to give Bing a try.
I have t-mobile prepay. I just sent a text to 46645 and got a prompt text back with the info for the store I specified.
I have used this service since the beta, for like hhm at least 3 years. use it all the time, sometimes it doesn't quite get it, but usually it was like an audio google search over and phone, toll free. it was all voice recognition and synthesis and it would make this delightful android "pepepdpidpdp" sound while it was thinkning.
anyone else ever use this?
who knows ive been trying all of googles wierd stuff since the beta of gmail. and this was one of the things that was actually useful.
Could be war by proxy, but the logic here is probably that Google will fight on its own behalf to the death for Android, as Oracle is about to find out, and it's more productive to scare the handset makers into not wanting to use Android. In this regard, whoever is calling these shots at Microsoft seems smarter than Larry Ellison.
I used this service a ton. I am sad to see it go.
This was a great tool for calling businesses while driving, Google would even text the matching result if I wanted a record on my phone. I think I would even be willing to pay a small monthly/per-use fee for this service, as long as it's under $2/call current AT&T directory assistance rip-off.
How many services do they have if they have enough to be shutting down 411 services? I bet 400 of those are internal use only, like their specialty child porn searcher, and the legal torrent search which no one has any use for.
Yes, I am joking!
GOOG-411 is actually one of their better services. It's a shame that they're scraping it and replacing it with some stupid mobile apps of dubious value. If I have a good enough connection to pull data from the web I can just Google the damn thing anyway. GOOG-411 is good because any crappy old phone can handle it even with a pretty bad signal and it's easy to understand. It's like the 411 we already are familiar with except it actually finds the right information for you and doesn't charge you a small fortune.
I really hope they reconsider the shutdown. Don't kill good products to make room for crap products. Instead why not try marketing it and making it a profit center?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
How is this easier?
Voice method:
Text method:
Or you could just use 1-800-JUSTDIAL, also funded by Sequoia Capital - the same guys behind Google.
They are operating a completely free service as well and instead of a software VR which can give some real howlers - this service has human operators taking your call.
It would seem at&t is aware of this
http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=6755
> Just SMS the name of the business to 46645 (googl) with your non-smart
> phone and get similar results messaged back
Google SMS is not as good as it once was! I used it constantly in 2006 and 2007, perhpas early 2008 for all sorts of useful, accurate, fuzzy searches, the stuff you can do with Google Maps but fast. To wit:
* lowes in 10038
* starbucks in 07310
* old navy in 07020
* ducati dealer near metuchen nj
and I immediately received 2, 3 invariably USEFUL texts that I could peruse for proximity, preference. This was prior to smartphone wide adoption. It could have well have been or be for renegade, anti-materialist, unemployed, frugality reasons. However, Google's results began to go absent, un-fuzzy, useless. I was standing on Eight Avenue near Garfield Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn when I once again needed home supplies and tried the above first search. No results! I wasted ten minutes on the street, eight to ten texts to see why I could not get useful results that I knew Google had; it was a regular search for me then. I was so frsutrated as I needed the information, my Garmin unit's DB was incompltete on this topic, I already knew, and Google's results were always fresh AND proximitous if I used a zip code. It turned out that if I used the local Lowe's (home supply) mailing zip code I would get a result! I had to know of its existence and location to receive Goog's result. Unreal! Mind you even searching for Brooklyn, NY gave no results---they have one, as I should have already made concrete.
Emblematically this state of affairs was typical for the next two years and I gave up on Google SMS to their detriment.
Google411 in my experience was like speaking to a dense human, I would shout at it in despair. It would not understand a spoken zip code location, you would have to type it upon its bork. Then would have to repeat search object. Then it would launch into results, which upon selection would dash to dial unwantedly, which upon the command of "next result" would bail to a new search, etc. *sigh* You had to learn its dense syntax, fine, but its frequent aborts, forced repetition, forced repetition, was is grating. Hasta la vista! That's as far as I have wanted to get to it in years, line-of-sight only..
Anyway, use the MS alternative it is less grating, just as (more) useful and Google's loss is the monopolist's gain. Whatevers.
1-800-555-TELL
http://www.tellme.com/you