Google Voice Local Search – Free 411 from Google!
Posted on April 10, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I hate being charged $.40 or $1 or however much Verizon charges for their 411 service and that’s probably why I never use it! But alas, Google to the rescue! Google has just released a very nice service which is in the experimental stage called Google Voice Local Search. The nice thing about this service is that it has voice recognition and it’s pretty damn good at it!
In order to use the service, you simply need to dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. It’ll ask you for your city and state and then you can say the name of a local business. Currently, the service is only for local businesses (your Yellow Pages basically), but may be expanded to include people lookups also.
I tried to have fun with the system and slurred my speech, but amazingly it was still able to figure out what I was saying! And by playing around with it, the best feature is not if you already know the name of the business, but if you’re just interested in a particular category. For example, if you’re in the mood for Italian, just say “Italian resturants” and it’ll go through the list that it has of top italian resturatns in your area ordered from best to worst! Good for the cheap people like me who don’t buy the Zagat’s guide! 
Once you select the business, it’ll automatically dial the number for you! Cool service!
[tags]google local voice search, google 411, local business phone numbers[/tags]
» Filed Under Google Software/Tips
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4 Responses to “Google Voice Local Search – Free 411 from Google!”
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Search for local business listings, maps and directions on your mobile for free Says:
[...] through text messaging or by voice recognition. Previously, I had talked about Google’s 411 service which came out a little bit after Tellme, so you’ll have to play around with both [...]
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:38 am
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Find local merchants and service providers using FastCall411 Says:
[...] get rid of those useless Yellow Pages books once and for all! Previously, I wrote about the free Google 411 service and another service called Tellme, both of which are very [...]
October 26th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I used this service while I was traveling and it was great but why is Google doing this? I hope they won’t sell my cell phone number to solicitors. Has anyone had any problems? Every time I sign up and give my email address to any service I get tons of spam rangingfrom lotteries to sexual crap. So I hope this is not another way to sign me up for something I don’t want.
I just now tried to get a phone number from Google 411. It could not find the phone number and began reading me a list of useless suggestions. When I said “start over” (very clearly- and, I don’t speak with an accent) it kept saying “Sorry, text messages cannot be sent using this service” This happened three times before I gave up and looked up the number in my phone book. I absolutely hate automated services that are supposed to understand spoken words, but don’t.