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"If you're a fan of Google's voice-powered directory, 1-800-GOOG-411, you have a little more than a month to enjoy its many splendors; the service is going dark on November 12.\nBack in 2007, Google launched GOOG-411 to help users easily call businesses around the U.S. and Canada via voice recognition. \nAccording to the Google Blog, this was the first such service Google offered and has laid the groundwork for a ton of its more sophisticated, smartphone-oriented fare \u2014 such as voice search, voice input and voice actions.\nSo you shouldn't mourn too much for the loss of GOOG-411; its death was not in vain \u2014 it served its purpose (contributing to present innovations), and according to Google, resources will now be focused on even more steps forward: \"Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we\u2019re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.\"\nAnd for those of you out there who don't have smartphones (only 17% of Americans own one) you can still text the name and location of a business to \"GOOGLE\" (466453) to score the number you require.\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, jayfish"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/10/08/rip-1-800-goog-411/>