startupmeme Archive

Got a tip from Bilal over at StartupMeme about a new launch from Google Labs. Called "Voice Local Search," it connects you with local businesses and merchants in your area. Bilal notes:

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.

This holds great potential for Google and could really hurt the 'bells. Imagine if Google knows your phone number you are calling from, attaches that to the ads you have heard and responded to and can target the right type of ads from there. Good stuff…

And lastly, it's nice to see Google create something search related!

Update via TechCrunch: This is actually a product that Google’s been testing in various formats for some time. Steve Poland (a judge for the video startups) is pointing me to some posts (and here) by Greg Sterling from last year that discuss this. The earliest reports on this are from October 2006, and the service may be from an acquisition of 1-877-520-FIND. More information here.