Startup Meme

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Google, just released a new telephone service in the US, called Voice local Search. This service is a replacement of the traditional 411 service and gets multiple listings like the ones you get in Google Local. The service could be accessed by calling 1-800-GOOG-411. People using the service from a mobile device can also have listings sent to them via SMS, including telephone number and full address. Users can also get connected to businesses. The service is completely managed by voice recognition softwares and the results are quiet stunning. The service does not support residential listings at the moment, however I expect that to come soon. A cheat sheet of shortcuts is here.

411 is a huge market worth around $7 billion, with around 2.6 billion calls made in U.S. each year. Jingle Networks, the operator of 1800free411, was the first entrant in this market to offer the service for free and within no time captured 6% of the entire market, serving around 17 million calls in Feb 2007.

Jingle´s business model was to make money from short advertisements that were played to the caller before the requested number was dialed. Which turned out to be revolutionary as many people preferred spending 12 seconds of their life instead of paying a fee of upto $3 per call.

Google will likely adopt the same business model and will serve ads before the number is dialed. It just amazes me to know about all the different services and ways in which Google´s huge inventory of Ads could be served.

Update: Read Techcrunch and Search Engine Land

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