Google has announced the shut down of 1-800-GOOG-411, voice-powered directory search service.
The service will shutdown on November 12th
“GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:
- Voice Search – search Google by speaking instead of typing.
- Voice Input – fill in any text field on Android by speaking instead of typing.
- Voice Actions – control your Android phone with voice commands. For example, you can call any business quickly and easily just by saying its name.
Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.” – official blog
The service probably lost its mojo, owing to several other competitive services (from Google itself) like Google mobile app or the ability to call businesses from Gmail itself; and lack of clear monetization strategy around the same.
Justdial
As per one of the study, around 80% Americans do not own a smartphone and that paves the way for voice based offerings. With closure of this service, Justdial which launched its service in US 6 months back gets the right boost for its voice based service.
What do you think?
Also see: Google shuts down voice search in India
