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

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."

"senior voice expert"?

[larry bagina]

that gives me flashbacks to the .com bubble days.

Re:If you don't know what this is about

[pbhj]

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

Re:"senior voice expert"?

[crossmr]

shouldn't this be modded funny? These systems are rarely usable or friendly. Especially the new ones that try to do voice recognition..

What the Flip?

[camperdave]

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?

Re:If you don't know what this is about

[owlnation]

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.

Re:What the Flip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent got modded Flaimbait? He expressed my thoughts exactly!

Even as a /.'er I've never even heard of GOOG-411 and now some biddy-biddy-boop sound used in this phone service is News For Nerds? TFA doesn't even elaborate on why the sound is supposedly "more complicated to design than you'd think"; which was the sole reason I even read the article.

What a waste of time. This damn Google worship is really starting to piss me off.

Re:Huh?

[Dahamma]

Well there's you problem... who ever heard of FRUIT at a Mongolian barbeque!?

Re:So...

[Dogtanian]

Obviously, you cared enough to read it and post a comment.

It's not until you read the story and listen to this supposedly wonderful "sound" that you realise how lame and pointless the whole thing is. Nothing against the sound- it's mildly unusual, and an interesting enough attempt- but certainly nothing that warrants a front page, mainly because the accompanying story provides no insight into it beyond "it was meant to be the test sound, but we kept it on". Not living in the US, I wasn't familiar with "Google 411" so wondered what the deal with this sound was.

There isn't one.

And having taken the time to read the story and listen to the sound, it's fair to say how pointless it is. :)

too self-consciously created for it's purpose

[xPsi]

The article is well written but has this annoyingly casual tone like "of course you know what this super-famous ubiquitous sound is and obviously, as someone 'in the know,' you care about its origins." No. In fact, I have no freaking idea what you are talking about. This makes me wonder if it isn't an attempt at a viral marketing scheme. Sadly, now when I finally do hear the otherwise amusing little sound (which would be much more amusing if I had no idea where it came from), I'll only think "this is a self-important hyper-over-engineered sound that was too self-consciously created for it's purpose."

Function? Usable? Friendly? On what planet?

[JonTurner]

>>Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.

Well, except for the system used by the Cable TV, credit card, bank, telco, computer tech support, university admissions, etc. company. 'Cause those systems seem like they're designed with the sole purpose of making it as difficult as possible to actually speak to a human being. The end result is I'm typically about as happy as Alanis Morissette on a blind date by the time I get to speak to someone with a funny accent who knows even less than I do about the subject matter.