I’ve written from time to time on the “real intention” behind Google’s free 411 service. I’ve long felt it was not a business desire to be in the voice services business as a 411 service provider; rather, it is a new channel for collecting huge volumes of voice utterances, from which it could build it’s own technology for voice recognition. Freeing itself from the shackles of TellME/Microsoft and Nuance - the two technology stalwarts in voice reco (who tend to vigorously acquire and defend patents), was pretty strategic.

John Markoff, NY Times technology columnist, highlights this evolving picture further, with an interesting profile article “Google is Taking Questions“. Markoff references a new (apparently not quite yet available) iphone app enhancement in Google’s search app.

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I’ve speculated a couple of times in the past that Google’s entry into the “free DA” space had little to do with a business intention to compete with free 411 services, but rather a strategic development initiative that aims to construct a voice vocabulary.

There are many reasons for Google to be in the forefront of a voice-based interface. Nuance’s technology domination (via voracious acquisition) and Microsoft’s capture of TellMe “forced” Google to do what they love to do - build it from scratch.  In order to succeed in voice technology, however, you need a huge base of data (voice utterances) to mine into search ontologies.  While Google clearly have this in text-entered search, it had no source in voice.  Enter GOOG-411. A consumer service on one side, but a massive pipe for capturing large volumes of voice search terms on the other.

As further evidence of this being a means-to-an-end, Silicon Alley Insider reports on the new audio indexing feature announced by Google for Video Search. Cutely/annoyingly named Gaudi, this gives us a more clear sense of Google’s intentions for voice search, and their ambitions in indexing spoken words in video (presumably, podcasts and perhaps music lyrics can’t be too far behind!)

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Investor’s Business Daily does an update story on the progress of free 411 services. Not a lot of new news, but it appears the story may have been triggered by an otherwise unannounced $13M C-1 incremental tranche of financing for Jingle Networks, as noted today in Venture Beat.

An interesting comment from the story, for those watching the development of Free DA models, and the positioning of Google and Microsoft services in this space.

Google’s service, focused on business listings, is an extension of Google’s Web search, says Mike Cohen, manager of Google’s speech technology group. “It’s really playing into the very core of mission of Google, which is to organize all of the world’s information and make it easily accessible,” he said. Cell phone users can use the Google service in combination with its online maps to help find businesses.”… “Ads won’t be part of the 411 service for now”, Cohen says. “We don’t currently have any plans to monetize it”.

It also appears from the article that Microsoft has likewise confirmed no intention to monetize their service. for now.

This sets an interesting backdrop to the progression of “free look-ups” across the landscape of local media and search services. Are listing/name based look-ups going to continue to be free to both consumers AND advertisers, as they are in G-Y-M internet and voice search services?

411, Free DA | 2 Comments »

I thought I’d play around with some polling tools, and post an occasional question on this blog for voting. At the end of the week, I’ll post the final results tally.

This week’s question is intended to stimulate some context for a key pricing and strategy issue in the local search business.

Is the value of a consumer click-through from the results of a business name search the same as a click-through from the results of a category or keyword search?  Obviously the intention of one is to get to one known business, the other presumably happens after some level of comparison between competing choices.

Of course, you can add your commentary below…

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So, the speculation about Google’s entry into 411 as a tool for building their own voice search foundation has been confirmed. It seemed like the right scenario awhile back, now it’s confirmed from the head of Google Search Products & User Experience.

Explained here, Marissa Meyer confirms the suspicions I raised awhile back. From an interview with Infoworld

” …So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. … So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we’re trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy.”

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As with ATG (all things Google) the industry watches every blink, nod and burp of the morphing colossus…far be it for me to not exhibit pile-one behavior…

Recently, the search engine mavens have noted the first sign of Google advertising its services - a marked shift from its traditional viral growth without any brand or services advertising. Of all things, it chose to advertise its Free 411 voice service. The media of choice? billboards. What’s up with that?

(more…)

411, Free DA, voice search | 1 Comment »

This post by Henry Blodgett presents evidence and good analysis behind the macro shift in market share from traditional media to online. Summarizing, Blodgett notes:

U.S. advertising revenue at all 19 companies increased 8% year over year in Q2, to $13.8 billion ($55 billion annualized). The online portion of this pie grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion (23% share to 30% share). The offline portion, meanwhile, shrank from $9.9 billion to $9.6 billion (77% share to 70% share). The online companies, in other words, picked up 7 percentage points of market share in a single year.

The breakdown by media type, was also noteworthy:

…the only traditional media business that grew U.S. advertising year-over-year in Q2 was Outdoor (up 13%). Meanwhile:

. Television (cable/broadcast) shrank 1% ($50M)
. Print (magazines/newspapers) shrank 5% ($170M)
. Radio (terrestrial) shrank 7% ($105M)

A different vein of gold for local media might be sitting inside these stats… (more…)

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Google’s just announced acquisition of Grand Central paints another point on a line with an increasingly clear path. Google is building the infrastructure for a suite of communication services that erase the lines between modalities and communications delivery channels.

For the unfamiliar, Grand Central is an innovative voip-based technology company (an NBC video roll for a simple overview, and their Demo 2006 video gives a more detailed product concept orientation).The GrandCentral notion of a “life-long, multi-modal mailbox” will presumably be integrated with GoogleTalk and Gmail. This will become a compelling hook to your personal communications life.

What might this imply to the progression of voice services? advertising services? (more…)

web 2.0, IM, 411, Free DA, voice search | 1 Comment »

Patents seem to be increasingly newsworthy items of late, huh? You have probably already read about Jingle Networks‘ announcement of a patent award - the lead abstract description is copied below:

The current invention is a system for providing telephone directory assistance service in which a telephone user calls to the system and the system will, based on the requested number or type of service, hear a recorded advertisement. The advertisements are selected from a databank according to selection criteria, which may include any number of advertisements. After the advertising announcement is completed, the directory assistance call is processed as usual. The selection criteria can include the use of SIC codes.

The industry reaction I’ve witnessed seems to be fairly consistent - with a patent filing date of May 31, 2002 how can something this general purpose not have “prior art”? (more…)

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Another insightful post on Tim O’Reilly’s blog, entitled “What Would Google Do?” This one is not (yet another) article on the perils of “evil” that might come from pouring more power into their hungry vortex. It’s not really about Google, even.

Rather it is a challenge to apply the model we’re coming to know as Web 2.0 to a broader reinvention agenda - using traditional services (phones, banks, insurance…) as cases-in-point.

(more…)

web 2.0, 411, YP, strategy | No Comments »