Google Launches Free 411 Service

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1. Robert Dewey
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

   Nah, it’s not dead. I’m thinking of reviving it with a Digg-clone model.

   Thoughts?

2. EP
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

   As a long-time user of Free411 - I have to say Goog 411 is much, much better. Especially the fact that it connects you directly to the business and doesnt just give you the phone number.

3. Michael Arrington
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

   interesting…looks like there’s more to this story. See update.

4. Ed
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 2:44 pm

   I used to love their SMS feature, but lately the results I get back from Google are way off. I’m wondering if the same will happen with this service. Will I just get frustrated because I’m connected to the wrong business? (This also happens once in awhile with 411 service.)

5. Vaibhav Domkundwar - Better Labs
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

   It will be intresting to see how Free411’s automated+human approach fairs against’ Goog411’s fully automated one. I wonder if end users care if they talk to a machine or a person, even if the machine interface might take longer in some cases. Also, would this boil down to a marketing dollars game eventually? I loved the Free411 model and the conversation of it on the TalkCrunch episode. A follow-up on that to get Josh’s opinions on Goog411 will be interesting.

6. Mike
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 3:04 pm

   I think the best part of this is the little sound effects it makes while it’s looking up a phone number. If you listen closely enough you can hear a human voice signing.

7. Muhammad
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

   Could I add my name or fake business name to Google’s business index and let people get free calls to my home or mobile phone using the service since it’s a 1-800 number and forwards the call directly to the desired business?

   Just a thought that quickly popped in my head.

8. heri
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

   this is freaking me. Google is in what industry again?

   do you imagine a day if for example google employees go on strike and servers go down…

9. Charles Knight
   

   April 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

   Check out all of the talking search engines on Read/WriteWeb:

   http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....unched.php

10. tech
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    it can be usefull for blind people

11. Adam benayoun
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    Google remind me of an hungry kid who want to eat from all the plates presented at the buffet. When do they stop?

12. Joshua
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

    Most likely Google is using Nuance Speech Technologies.

    look for Google to expand to other Speech based offerings in the future.

13. Joshua
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm

    This is a direct attempt by Google to make inroads by Google on TELLME’S turf !

14. cettio
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    520-Find was never a separate entity from Google. All the speech technology was pieced together in house….520-Find was just a cover to get user feedback and modify/test the speech app…then release under 1-800-GOOG-411. 1-800-FREE411 will soon be dropping all human operators to reduce avg call costs.

    Notice how 2 years ago no one really thought telephony “411″ (directory assistance) pertained to search? Now it apparent that “411″ is the voice behavior entry point for mobile local search.

    Maybe if 5 years ago Tellme positioned their voice portal 1-800-555-TELL to be 1-800-411-TELL free directory assistance service, instead of pushing a web/portal strategy, the value proposition to consumers would have been more clear, volume would be 10 fold what it is today, and that part of their business would be MUCH more valuable. Anyway, Tellme still clearly came out a winner.

15. Frodar
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Google is definitely using Nuance technology. They hired half the original (Menlo Park) Nuance development team. Nuance Founders Hy Murveit and Mike Cohen work there, as does Mike Hochberg.

    5 years ago Tellme did position their voice portal to be search. They had all the restuarants, hotels, airlines car rental places, and would connect you free of charge. The problem is the cost/value. The ads weren’t worth nearly as much as the phone call costs. It’ll be interesting to see where Google takes this, but a phone call might cost them fifteen to twenty cents. What will the ad revenue be?

16. Joshua
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

    Michael,

    Do you think that Google is using Nuance speech technologies ?

    awating your response

    Thanks,
    Joshua

17. Star Jones
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

    “Google remind me of an hungry kid who want to eat from all the plates presented at the buffet. When do they stop?”

    Stop eating at a buffet??? - you must be joking.

    —Star

18. Steve Morsa
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    I haven’t done a US PTO search (and in any case, pending patents don’t have to be published); but someone no doubt has one or more patents covering this technology/methodology. If they’re still pending issuance, the lawsuit battles could be a few years off…but with Google now in the game, those battles are sure to take place eventually…

19. Rob Davy
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    There’s no way paid 411 is dead. The ease (and ignorance of 90% of the population) of just being able to dial 411 will be amazingly hard to stop or beat.

    Rob
    http://www.cadencecreek.ca

20. Amazon Secret Shopping
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm

    Its really nice to see the free 411 serice… Love you Google !

21. Chris24
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    It Doesn’t work with Skypeout, it says “Busy”

22. Vijay Chakravarthy
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    Hmm, from the end user perspective, given the trends in storage available on the cell phone, wouldnt it be much better to have all the local business information available on the phone, with a nice browsable interface? Add in the gps/wifi placeware type geolocators, and you would cover most of the common scenarious for 411 requests…

    Thoughts? Comments?

23. Vijay Chakravarthy
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    Oops, meant PlaceLab in the previous post..

24. cettio
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    frodar:

    you are right, the business model is still yet to be proven.

    My point was just about getting call volume. 5 yrs ago Tellme was cash rich and wanted to pump volume. They spent a lot of cash buying billboards for 1-800-555-TELL - positioned it as search…but the opening behavior and best value proposition for consumers is “411″. Then from that behavior gateway, you extend your deeper “search” experiences…eg. find local business by category.

    If they did not have to expend so many resources gaining volume, then they could have focused more on monetization. SMS ad units is one idea. They are getting $40-60 CPM now for SMS. That’s $0.04-0.06 per SMS. The call costs are certainly below $0.05 per for tellme’s scale and automation.

25. met
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 7:13 pm

    My Cingular (old-ATT) account has a free information service (they charge for airtime). I’ve been using it a lot. Dial #121.
    From the few tests I did now, Google’s voice recognition has been slightly better.

26. Hip Hop
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    hmm I will have to try this out soon, I use 411 often

27. xxdesmus
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 7:19 pm

    Yep, Free 411 just lost me … this works quicker, equally as accurate, and no stupid advertisements.

28. voxita
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    I’m in Rome… It Doesn’t work with my Skypeout… why???

29. Remi
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

    there is also 1800-free-411

30. Jorge
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    Now, if only Google could focus on making its search products useful again, instead of coming out with a billion of them that return inaccurate results.

    I gave it my address and asked for a pizza place. It connected me to a store almost 50 miles away, even though there are dozens of pizza places within a few miles of my apartment.

    Looks like another half-assed beta from Google.

31. Brian Bowman
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    I find this an interesting product launch as it may reveal Google’s next strategy step … Goog411 + Google base + Google CPA network = a yellow page killer.

    - Seems like they are creating a value chain to attack the yellow pages (book & online)
    - Free 411 calls (automated of course and most likely ranked by CPC)
    - Free listings (craig’s list + yellow pages - possible with CPC over time)
    - CPA deals (monetizable advertising targeting the local space = leads [i.e. fulfill a service-based business online] and start moving the $12 Billion in SMB advertising online in a meaningful way)

32. AZ websites
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    I don’t think the market is dead it’s just too expensive. I will start using it more often now that Google has a free service. I refuse to pay 2-3 dollars to find an address.

33. Ross
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 9:30 pm

    the GOOG text is money. gives you the st. address, phone number…what else do you need? (also good when drinking)

34. Jeff
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

    411 is sticking around for awhile. what a lot of people don’t realize is that the #1 customer of 411 directory assistance is bill collectors. they use live operators to get a number of listings, as well as do a number of residential searches with different spellings.

35. dysonlu
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

    Google is using Nuance’s speech recognition engine, so is Tellme and 99% of all companies doing serious enterprise speech applications.

36. pr0xy k1ll3r
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 10:07 pm

    FOUR MIX adverts on the front page itself?
    It’s hilarious and the event is sold out btw…

37. Tommy
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

    Its kind of odd you didn’t mention 1-800-free-411 by name.

38. Brian Laks
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 11:15 pm

    Yes! Is there nothing they can’t do?? I give humble praise to our fearless leader. I look forward to them participating in every industry, soon it may be possible to live supported entirely (and exclusively) by Google services. God bless Google, in Google we trust.

39. Trev
    

    April 6th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    … Google are kinda taking this too far.

40. Alex
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 12:03 am

    Mike,

    Your update above is very interesting…

    Just last week a Saudi Prince invested in a 411 company. OUCH!!! though I’m quite sure he can afford to lose his investment:

    Saudi Prince Al Hussein Bin Talal has invested in Toll Free Yellow Pages
    in the amount of $32.5M in funding and an additional $7.5M upon met
    milestones.

    Toll Free Yellow Pages has not yet launched (” it is set to launch
    sometime in the second half of 2007 “) but says it will be offering a
    free alternative to 411 calls. To pay for for all of those free calls,
    the company has partnered with DiscountMore.com to deliver consumers
    comparison shopping over the phone.

    The company and investors must be inspired by 1-800-Free-411 from Jingo
    which surprised everyone by ringing up 100M calls as of last November
    and now controls 6% of the U.S. market in 411 calls. TellMe and AT&T
    have also apparently jumped into this proven market winner.

41. Snausages
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 1:05 am

    When it connects you to the other number, is it free?

42. tAkmaN
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 1:42 am

    I am surprised at some of the comments here. Google is in the business of bandwidth/community creation and then stuffing the community with pain-free, no-nuisance ads PAID BY THE COMPANIES NOT CONSUMERS. Brian Bowman has shown some of the path here. Jorge’s pizza quest is actually what it will be all about. Here the trick is selective push of advertisers. And Frodar “a phone call might cost them fifteen to twenty cents” might have been a true statement for another era, but not today, where call bandwidth is virtually free, even here in the old world. The real cost is in development/implementation and Google is burning a lot of cash here. I hope they can take it to the point of no return, so that even if they have to step back, the service quality and cost for consumer will stay at the levels they might push it. Google = free information.

    My $0.02

43. Cert
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 4:00 am

    This sucks, i work for verizon 411 and we go straight to humans, dont automate our jobs =( me, my mom, my sister, my cousin, and roomate all work there. dont ruin our families!

44. Rajeev Vashsiht
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 5:14 am

    Anything computer is better thn Humanoids.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

45. keansmith
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 5:22 am

    In terms of “business model” comments, I think Google has an advantage that 1-800-Free-411 doesn’t have: they already possess the business data. As they say on their FAQs page: “The local-business information used by Google Voice Local Search is the same as that on Google Maps. ” Whereas, if I remember the TalkCrunch podcast correctly, Free-411 SUBSCRIBED to the data available to all the existing 411 providers. I don’t remember what this subscription fee was (or if it was mentioned), but I would assume that by not having to pay it, Google possesses a cost advantage that would allow it to be more user-friendly (i.e., wait to figure out a less-intrusive way to monetize the listings than a pre-roll).

46. Kenny Jahng
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 7:01 am

    FYI, there’s an unpublished access dial-in number for Google Voice Local Search that doesn’t seem to suffer from the initial public calling overload, so you won’t get the occasional fast-busy signal I’ve experienced. Not a huge issue, but when you’re in the car, trying to find the address or phone number of a local pizza joint, a busy/redial is a hassle you can avoid: try the 877 flavor of the number

    http://www.essistme.com/2007/0.....ever-busy/

47. recep
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    Well Google Growing up rapidly with its new services and earning huge month of incomes day by day with its advertisements…
    l wish google will see other parts of the world than usa. What about asia ? we want other google services in asia too!

48. Tom
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm

    keansmith - are you forgetting that 800-Free-411 has residential listings and google doesn’t?? Until Google gets the residential listings 800-Free-411 will still be a more complete product, ads aside.

49. keansmith
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Tom - True.

    I just tried both, though, with kind of a tough listing: Caserta Vecchia in Brooklyn NY. Google got it on the second try. But Free-411 wasn’t even close. Try it and see what I mean.

    Also, it doesn’t seem beyond the scope of Google to roll out listings that go beyond residential….as they have things in every category….like non-commercial stuff like “good places to see sunset,” etc.

50. Jorgen
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    Tellme answers 800-555-1212, Verizon’s (cell and landline) native 411, Cingular’s native 411, and some others. They answer about half of all directory assistance calls in the country right now.

51. Arturo
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    Google must be blocking Skype. I am able to use 800-Free411 but not the Goog411.

52. PhoneGuy
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

    I tried 800-Free-411 a while back, and once was enough. When I need a number, I need it NOW, not after listening to advertising blather. I hesitantly tried 800-GOOG-411 today and was thrilled with the experience. I have worked on Nuance implementations, and they all require tuning, so no surprise there. This one seems to be have gone through much tuning and is very impressive. I do lament the job losses, but at least they are not going off-shore (at least not directly).

53. David Mackey
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    I’ve never used 411 - paid or otherwise.

54. Siddharth Thakkar
    

    April 7th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

    Wow!

    Google likes to be everywhere there is information. I especially loved the fact that it connects you directly to a business.

    Alas! Can’t use it where I stay.

55. nomadicalloy
    

    April 8th, 2007 at 11:19 am

    This is good service. But I am always looking for reverse phone number search (google).

56. Christine
    

    April 8th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    This is really nice to have on the cell, with no charge. It does seem to have some trouble hearing, so you have to speak very clearly.

    Great idea, thanks GOOGLE!!!!

57. Ayal Rosenthal
    

    April 8th, 2007 at 4:04 pm

    Of course paid-411 is dead. People hate paying for services. Its that simple. A 50% market penetration in 2 years is feasible and then user-activity will avalanche towards full market participation.

58. Voip Man
    

    April 8th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    Yes it doesn’t look like it’s working with Skype. On mine it dials up and then quits few seconds later without making the connection. Otherwise it looks like a useful service for the PSTN phones.

59. j w
    

    April 9th, 2007 at 5:34 am

    doot da doot da doot da doot da dooot da doot da da da da
    doot da doot da doot da doot da dooot da doot da da da dah

60. pallet jack
    

    April 9th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    google is doing good; when you have invested everything in data -

    - You have to re-invest everything into; making that data accessible / this means launching new apps / widgets / websites / and now tele - services -

    - Im waiting for the Google Phones book; and Im for real!

    -RB

61. Smjohn
    

    April 9th, 2007 at 9:05 am

    Seems like the voice recogniation software does not understand city names like Winston-Salem.
    When I tried Houston, TX it worked like a champ. I like the text message feature.

62. Franklin
    

    April 9th, 2007 at 10:23 am

    A great idea, especially since small business can freely update their data. Next will be associated community reviews to create the Yellowpages/Small Business Administration in one stop. That will be the ultimate.

63. Xavier
    

    April 9th, 2007 at 11:26 am

    I just tried “Chipotle” - worked like a champ. I say “Chi-POAT-lay”, google says “CHI-Pot-el” - but nonetheless nails it and gives me the locations. killer

64. Neal
    

    April 11th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    What I am most excited about is to see how FREE-411 responds to the Google threat. According to Josh Kopelman (RedEye VC) it has taken 6% of the 411 market. Now we see a player like Google enter the space:

    Will it play out like what happened to Kiko (The Y! combinator calendar service) after Google calendar launched or will it be a able to hold its ground and continue to increase market share?

    The one thing 1-800-FREE411 has going for it is the fact that Google cant really tie it into search/Gmail (which is what it did against Kiko)/Local (?). So it has to use “real” marketing tactics to spread the word. Still I give Google a good shot!

65. June
    

    April 13th, 2007 at 6:09 am

    I work for 411 through DeltaCom. I hope it is not dead!! I guess there are always people who have nothing better to do with their money than to pay for 411 calls. And how is the vocal recognition with the foreign customers? I have had alot of customers who do have a very strong accent and need a live operator to understand what they are talking about.

66. Motorcycle Guy
    

    April 25th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    This is pretty cool. I wonder if all the other services like this (google sms search) all use a common algorithms or if they are independent of each other.

67. Hurray if 411 is Dead
    

    April 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am

    I say Hurray if 411 is dead! I do however feel little sorrow for people like June and whole families who work for the money greedy pigs called the phone industry.

    411 used to be the first 5 times a month was free. Then they charged you a reasonable amount for going over. This paid for your saleries and then some. Then a bright money pig wanting advancement at the phone company realized the cash cow is could be and a multi-billion dollar market sprang up overnight. So good for US! I only wonder if we are being set up again….

68. mike
    

    May 1st, 2007 at 12:33 am

    WOW THIS IS SO EASY TO USE I LOVE IT GOD JOB GOOGLE

69. TOM
    

    May 1st, 2007 at 12:39 am

    I LOVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE GOOGLE

70. j pierceson
    

    May 3rd, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    your ervice is useless

71. Lesa
    

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    I just wish you could dial 411 on your phone and get a real person like the old days. Not only would this provide a needed employment base, 411 operators, but you could actually explain that they werent understanding the name you were giving them, take down the spelling and give you the correct number unlike the computerized version now popular to all 411 programs.