Tellme, Google 411 searches — all about the data
Tellme, the voice recognition company, has released more mobile search features, giving it a leg up on Google’s recently announced 411 service.
In addition to offering voice mobile search, which Tellme announced last month, it gives you a way of search for business listings using SMS texting or mobile Web. Tellme gives business listings, maps, phone numbers and driving directions. See images below.
If you use the voice service, which you do by calling 1-800-555-TELL and just saying “business search,” you can get the results visually. If you text, you send your request to TELLM (83556). Finally, you can download the mobile application at http://www.tellme.com (or http://m.tellme.com from your mobile phone.)
Of course, with Microsoft just announcing its acquisition of Tellme, this gives Microsoft a response to Google’s mobile 411 service, launched just last week. It also puts renewed pressure on independent players, such as 4Info.
Tim O’Reilly, the co-owner of the Web 2.0 conference who has also studied the world of data closely, says these efforts are more than they appear at the surface. It’s also about the data:
In short, I’m speculating that the 1-800-GOOG-411 service is designed to harvest voice data to build Google’s own speech database, rather than licensing from Nuance or another player.
If I’m right about this, we see here another demonstration of my Web 2.0 principle that “data is the Intel Inside”, and that many of the future battles between industry giants will be around who owns data, rather than who controls software APIs. In that battle, we’ll see deployed all kinds of techniques to “harness collective intelligence” to build added value databases of various kinds.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
