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October 08, 2004
GOOGL For Mobiles
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
While I was writing about Google's book business, the company was busy preparing something closer to my current beat -- Google for Mobiles. (I got the picture here.)
Think of it as an adjunct to the Google Local service. (Right, the one that still thinks a place that closed two years ago is your nearest restaurant.)
Send an SMS message to 46645 (that's GOOGL on your mobile keypad) and you'll get snippets of data from your local area. Full instructions are at http://sms.google.com and the current beta works only in the U.S.
I think this is the best demonstration yet of how useless SMS actually is. Operators have tried for several years to tell us how cool it is to send little text blocks through wrist-straining keypad combinations and, sorry, it's for kids. SMS is like a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. It proves how lame the underlying idea is.
Yeah, I know -- it's beta. So's Google News.
Comments (1)
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Tariq Mustafa on October 9, 2004 01:50 PM writes...
SMS? Useless? One must be a contemporary American to say that. You need to be in Asia, Far East - (or even Pakistan!) to see how SMS is now a part of our lives. Its not for kids alone. Wrist straining keypad combinations? No way. Its second nature for poeple here. Google is doing what the 'world' might ask for. Too bad we cannot reach the short code (46645) from our cell phones yet. I believe Google (or an affiliate) will soon start Wholesale-IP-to-SMS gateway stuff to let the operators of the world reach this service.
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