GOOG-411 (or Google Voice Local Search) was a

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into el ...

service launched by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...

in 2007, that provided a speech-recognition-based business directory search, and placed a

call Call or Calls may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * Call, a type of betting in poker * Call, in the game of contract bridge, a bid, pass, double, or redouble in the bidding stage Music and dance * Call (band), from Lahore, Pak ...

to the resulting

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

or Canada. The service was accessible via a

toll-free telephone number A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefi ...

. It was an alternative to

4-1-1 4-1-1 is a telephone number for local directory assistance in Canada and the United States. Until the early 1980s, 4-1-1 and the related 1-1-3 number were free to call in most states. In the United States, the service is common known as “info ...

, an often-expensive service provided by

local Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administra ...

and long-distance

phone companies A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunica ...

, and was therefore commonly known as Google 411. This service was discontinued on November 12, 2010.

History

GOOG-411 had been assisting people with obtaining phone numbers since 2007. On November 12, 2010, GOOG-411 shut down its service. While Google did not provide an official reason for the shut down, many believe that Google had simply gathered enough voice samples for its research purposes. Google also operated a similar service from SMS number 466453 which has also been discontinued.

Operations

Users who called the

s 800-466-4411 or 877-466-4411 (800-GOOG-411 and 877-GOOG-411) or the local number 425-296-4774 were asked for the city and state of the sought business. Users were also able to search for by business name or category, which generated a list of up to eight search results. Search was also invoked by using the

keypad A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric inp ...

if the user preferred. This worked in a similar manner to

predictive text Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than repeatedly ...

input on a

cellular phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

. Users were able to select the destination by speaking or pressing the number that corresponded to the desired result. Once the destination was selected, the service placed a call to the business or returned a

text message Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...

with the phone number. Alternatively, users were able to listen to the

street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...

and phone number by saying "details". U.S. users could narrow search results by ZIP code or street

intersection In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, their ...

. Although Google's FAQ stated that users were able to prevent their phone number from being saved by blocking their

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller (telecommunications), caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone ...

, this is ineffective when calling the 800 number (due to

ANI Ani ( hy, Անի; grc-gre, Ἄνιον, ''Ánion''; la, Abnicum; tr, Ani) is a ruined medieval Armenian city now situated in Turkey's province of Kars, next to the closed border with Armenia. Between 961 and 1045, it was the capital of the ...

) and only works when calling the other two. The service announced that the call may be recorded for the purpose of service improvements. Google advised users not to use the service for

emergency call Most public switched telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assista ...

s, recommending that they call

9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...

Business model

Google stated that the company originally implemented GOOG-411 to build a large

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

database from users' voice queries. This phoneme database, in turn, allowed Google engineers to refine and improve the speech recognition engine that Google uses to index audio content for searching.

References

{{Google Inc. Discontinued Google services Telephony Telephone numbers in Canada Telephone numbers in the United States Directory assistance services Internet properties established in 2007 Internet properties disestablished in 2010

History

Operations

Business model

See also

References