Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search

I recently received a text from Google that their SMS system is now providing public residential phone listings via a text message.

Simply enter a name, city & st. or zip and text it to 46645 (GOOGL) and you will receive back a complete residential listing including the phone and street address. Can a Goog-411 residential service be far behind?

Greg Sterling has noted a Thomson/Google deal that adds a one-touch, auto-dial GOOG-411 button into many of its latest GE-branded DECT 6.0™ cordless phones. It should give Jingle’s Free 411 service a pause and it certainly raises questions about when Google will monetize its free DA service. Voice DA services are currently very lucrative and free voice DA services have the potential to be very disruptive to them. LocalMobile notes no firm has been better at converting activity to revenue and profits than Google.

As Greg pointed out from a recent LocalMobile survey 76.3% of respondents (n=671) said they had never used “one of the free alternatives to carrier-provided 411 directory assistance”. And while Jingle 411 has some market share advantage in the remaining 24% of users, it is the larger group that will ultimately decide who wins in the disruptive Free 411 DA market. It is just this market that Google is targeting with the Thomson/GE deal.

The question for Thomson/GE is: why would they agree to the arrangement? Thomson/GE is not a corporation known for its easy going style and one assumes that they did not put the Goog-411 button on their phones for the warm and fuzzies of it. The April introduction date leaves me wondering if we might not see Goog-411 monetization in that timeframe.

The one current drawback to the Goog-411 service in a consumer setting is the lack of residential listings. This consumer driven deal with Thomson might just also imply a move by Google to add residential listings in the same timeframe.

Here are the top 10 read articles from Understanding Google Maps over the past 12 months:

1. Which On-line Directories provide details to Google Maps
2. First Case of Large Scale Abuse at Google Maps
3. Google Coupons now has searchable interface
4. Now taking Nominations for the Rubber Chicken Awards
5. Sources for Google Map’s Restaurant Local Listing data
6. Goog-411 Rolls out Billboards in the Hinterlands
7. Subscribe to Google Coupons
8. What does a link campaign look like for Local?
9. Has Google relationship with CitySearch changed
10. Yahoo Mapspam now appearing near you

From the goog411 Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/goog411?hl=en

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sat, Dec 22 2007 4:43 pm
From: Janu

Goog411 has been sending me the same text message every 15 minutes for
2 hours now at 10 cents a message. This is the first time I have experienced this problem when receiving text messages from goog 411.
Who do I contact to stop the messages??

Thanks for your help in advance,

Janu
================================================

If it takes this poor fellow as long to resolve his problem as it is taking (9 months and counting) for this school to solve theirs (where you will also find some earlpearl’s of wisdom), his cell phone bill will roughly equal the national debt of Kazikstan by the end of the upcoming holiday week.

Reader, Bob Brenly, has pointed out that Goog-411 calls are now completed by bandwidth.com in both the US and Canada as announced on any Goog-411 call.

I am curious about this change. Have they switched call completion providers? Why is it necessary to declare the provider at all?

Google may be getting big, and they may do some evil but unlike Microsoft they can still manage to make me smile and even laugh with some of their marketing.

Goog-411 started adding a range of introduction voices in August (see The many voices of Goog411, dude!) including children’s voices and voices with distinctive accents. For today they recorded their newest Ghoulgler for the intro. If you don’t use Goog-411 regularly you may listen to this mp3 recording of a recent call:

Ghoulgle.mp3

Audio recording of the many voices of Goog411Some seem to adore Goog-411 (like the folks at the Goog-411 Group), Google’s voice activated directory service that uses Map data and some like Chris from NaturalSearch panned it.I fall in between those extremes and while I understand Chris’s criticism about Goog-411’s failings I use the service on a somewhat regular basis despite its annoyances:

•It completes my calls thus offering hands free phone use

•It’s free

•It works more than 80% of the time

•It’s fun

It is fascinating to me to see Google’s Map data set being pushed out over a totally distinct network in a useful fashion although I doubt that the public will start using voice activated directory assistance for category searches in any great volume over the near term.

My usage habits are very entrenched in the city, business name model of directory assistance and I assume most consumers are as well. I suppose there is a certain cool factor that the service has and that the folks at the Goog-411 group go gaga over.Google seems to be making a bid to cater to that cool factor. They have recently changed their intro to the service which announces Goog-411 from a single male voice to a large variety of voices.

Some of them can be heard in the following compendium of voices recently recorded from dialing in to Goog 411:Audio recording of the many voices of Goog411