This is something for mobile phone users in India who don’t have a web-enabled phone – you can now search for information on Google using SMS. The service has been around for a while but Google is no longer charging a premium fee for sending you the SMS message.
The Google SMS search service may be used for finding movie timings, weather, nearest pizza restaurant, currency conversion, train schedules, cricket scores and a host of other things.
One of the very useful features in SMS search is language translation. For instance, I could SMS "say hello in French" to 9-77-33-00000 to get the right French word.
Google SMS Search could be real bad news for the business of services like Indiatimes that charge a premium fee for delivering news or astrology updates on the mobile phone using short codes.
For details go to the Google Mobile website or check their help center for more details.
The Google blog says that you only need to pay the standard SMS text charges for sending the SMS query to Google – there’s no fee for the incoming messages from Google. The service is available for all popular cellular networks including Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Reliance, Spice, Tata Indicom and Vodafone.
Related: Google SMS for Group Messaging
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/india/search-google-on-mobile-via-sms/5459/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
The drawback of NOT having a (premium-rate) short code is that the number is more difficult to remember for a user. When do I need search results on mobile? When I’m out and not near a computer. And in those situations, people would be more likely to remember a short code to send messages to rather than Google’s number.
Written by Ankur Banerjee on 11.18.08
The service is pretty cool, except for the fact that my queries came 12 hours late!
Written by ravi on 11.20.08
I submitted a query 2 days back and haven’t got a result yet :( Also, SMS to a Mumbai number from Bangalore costs me Rs2.
Written by Viijay on 11.20.08