OT: Goog411

riredale wrote on 5/31/2007, 10:19 AM

Okay, maybe I'm late to the party, but I saw an article in the WSJ today about a new Google service. You dial 1 800 GOOG411 and you can do a directory-information search for free via Google. Around here a regular directory-information call is about $2.

Google uses voice-recognition to understand what city and state you want and then the subject. It replies in a synthesized voice a few seconds later with the top 5 hits, and even offers to dial a number for you.

Cool. I just cannot imagine the size of the server farms that these guys must have at this point.

EDIT:
I should have mentioned that this is for USA telephone listings. I don't know if it works for international numbers, but I doubt they have spread to that degree.

Comments

apit34356 wrote on 5/31/2007, 10:48 AM

Google was one of the first big server farms (besides IBM )to recognize that energy saving means that one can add mega server farms using the $$$saving while not increasing total electrical demand from the old array. The next big step in heat/energy will be the blending of flash and disk arrays for server farms. Water cooling has been making a come back in the big server farms, especially in cooling the main chassis vs the boards, blending air cooling and water cooling, less plumping, a little less fan noise.

rmack350 wrote on 5/31/2007, 10:48 AM

When I dial 411 on my cell phone they try to use voice recognition but I'm almost always asking for a japanese or korean restaurant so I end up with a live operator. Spelling can be kind of arbitary for some restaurant names.

Rob