Google Launches SMS Search Service

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

I was wondering how they'd search my SMS

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's a search VIA SMS, which makes a lot more sense.

This may be king of mobile service offerings.

[Negadin]

This (or something like this) may be huge as people become more dependant on their mobile phones.

No one wants to navigate some funky mobile web page looking for things like numbers, addresses or other things. People want instant information easily.

SMS is pretty easy to understand - send a message and interpet the results. No clunky (and inconsistant) navigation problems.

Heck - mobile mfg's (or OS designers) could put a search service into their phone that could utilize google's offerings automatically.

fantastic idea

[djxploit]

i just wonder when they will roll it out to all countries as its only a us based thing now.
same thing also might happen as whats happening now (occasionally) sms googl and get a repsonse from google.com.sg :)

A natural progression

[saddino]

Google is clearly aiming to be the information center for the connected/wired world, which makes perfect sense: after realizing that Google's value is its sheer amount of content, any service that brings people to that content is going to be pursued.

I bet, eBay and Amazon, with similar giant demographic and e-commerce content won't be too far behind (e.g. the "price check" feature is tailor made for Amazon).

Google branching off the internet?

[Lifix]

So, google is branching out of the internet and into phones... well this certainly seems like a great idea. No one wants to spend the time to load up a web browser and web pages. This would make it alot easier to get google on phones, and this introduces google onto phones that can't get on the web, but can get sms's.

So much for 411.

[d3ity]

Looks like 411 just got outdated. Now I can get a phone number and address for anyone via SMS. And a text message costs what? less than 5 cents? vs a 2 dollar call to information?

Yeah, but it's nothing that new really...

[WIAKywbfatw]

People have been googling from WAP phones for years now.

Re:Not knowing what to say, I sent it 'pizza'

[ornil]

One thing that's missing is the ability to find where you are. So you actually have to tell it your address. However, the phone company obviously knows where you are, and I personally wouldn't mind if it communicated this information to Google upon my request.

For those concerned about privacy, I'd simply make it opt-in, i.e. phone company messages you the first time you do this, and asks to reply if you want to enable Google/some other guy (identified by their phone number) to see this information.
The phone company then always attaches your address when you message this number.

Doesn't SMS cost money for in/out?

[brendanoconnor]

I do not use my cellphone for much of anything except receiving calls and calling out. Does sending and receiving an sms cost money? If so that could add up. I mean, when I search google, sometimes I do not pick the right wording, and I get bad results, whilst other times I pick the right wording. A bad series of wording could cost me several out goings, and maybe since data has to be transmitted back, some incomings as well.

Correct me if I am wrong but this sounds like a good way nickel and dime the SMS users. Although they did send it. Oh well.

Brendan

Froogle price checks the killer app

[ewg]

Froogle price checks are the killer app here.

Standing in the middle of a retail store, you can gauge pricing versus online retailers.

Somewhere, Alan Greenspan is smiling.

Like many Google technologies

[bubba451]

Like many Google technologies, they'll probably put it out there to see if it sticks before thinking about making money from it. That's pretty much what's happened with Google News, Orkut, Gmail, etc.

And even if they never charge for it, they're reinforcing the notion of Google as the search king, which keeps people coming to google.com.

Re:Not knowing what to say, I sent it 'pizza'

[mibus]

Without triangulation of the signal (which is alot more manual in real life than TV makes it out to be), you can only get a result from knowing what base you're connected to, which is so inaccurate it's hardly a privacy issue.

(In most residential areas around where I live, you'd get like 5km accuracy... but I've seen it be about 40km away*!).

* It was a clear sunny day, the phone managed to get line-of-sight 50km across water to another base which just barely managed to be stronger than one on the other side of the hill we were on).

Pizza in Canada!

[Equis]

I typed in "pizza 48201" to find the Domino's around the corner here in Detroit. It gave me three results in WINDSOR, ONTARIO, CANADA.

I wonder if they deliver...

This service rocks

[wldkos]

I hope google adds more features to this service.

Re:Free?

[Blue Mushroom]

One of the reasons google is the internet search god is precisely because they offer so much truely useful functionality for free to the user. If they charged for this, yes, they would make money off of it. Will it ever become a killer cellphone app if they do charge for it? No, I don't believe so. The true value of providing this service is to drive the word google that much deeper into the minds of the users. Providing so many awesome services to people for free also builds customer loyalty, something they will desperately need when microsoft really starts playing dirty (well, more like extra super more than usual dirty) to steal google's market share.

Re:Outside USA

[jrumney]

Unfortunately not. 1MB of GPRS is $3 a month

So how much are 6500 SMS messages going to cost you?

Re:Yeah, but it's nothing that new really...

[igrp]

Yup, I ditched my cell phone provider's WAP homepage in favor of Google's a year and a half ago (I still have a bunch of portal subcategories bookmarked though).

I don't really use WAP all that much since I usually have a WiFi-enabled PDA with me and a networked computer within 100 yards (and that's the outside figure). But it's a pretty useful service when you're on the road and don't have luxury of IEEE 802.11 coverage.

Google's interface works really well on cell phones. They even have a system called "Google Numbers" (IIRC) which is basically a T9 [t9.com] type of system (you don't hit the #2 key twice to get a "b" character -- you just input numbers and let Google figure out what you mean). The interface is pretty slick and it works well even on a small, low-resolution cell phone screen.

The problem is, most other websites just don't. I realize there's really not a whole lot Google can do about it though. That's why these days, I usually don't even bother using WAP for anything except checking sports scores and headlines. It's just easier to use my cell phone and PDA (the only thing I use Bluetooth for these days -- and it rocks).