One of the first things I did when I arrived at the office this morning was search for Pizza!
Not because I’m on a high carb diet or I perversely eat an American Hot for breakfast, but because I was testing Google’s Voice Local Search and wow it worked first time and gave me results in under 2 seconds!
It worked from a busy, noisy street on my mobile when I asked Google to text the results to my mobile.
It also worked from my office when I wanted the results read aloud and also to be connected to the business identified.
So that’s it then - goodbye Yellow Pages, get a shave 118118 guys.
Is it now time for mobile operators to tear down the WAP decks, demolish the walled gardens and just let Google and others serve search results anywhere we want them.
I’d love to hear what you think.
I believe it was time to do this a year ago and the actions of mobile operators have inhibted growth. Surely they can figure out some other way of monetising the sure to explode mobile traffic, rather than the archaic data pricing that currently exists.
Cheap broadband turbocharged mainstream search.
Voice activated mobile/local search without constraint if coupled with data tariff changes would send mobile search into orbit.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
As a designer I have learnt a great deal about designing for mobiles however they count for less than ten thousandths of my user base (presuming all mobile users have JS on to be detectable). I think we are all geared up for the mobile revolution but when is impossible to predict in my opinion.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Fair comment Johan, but as far as search goes 0.01% of search volume can still be 150 million mobile originated searches per month that business could respond to with local products or highly targeted and useful services.
I was chatting with a guy from Orange recently who said when Orange played around with search and put it near top of their WAP decks and portals the search volume rose by a factor of a 100.
I was polite and affirmed the result and we chatted further about Orange opening up their portals and moving to a flat, low cost, unlimited data bundle which they intend to do in the summer.
What I was actually thinking was, wow - promote search and get a 100 fold increase in volume - no sh** Sherlock.