How May I Help You? Google Instant SMS Search Service

If you have come to a new city and you don’t where your currency can be converted

If you are watching an intense cricket match and the power goes off suddenly

If you have to know about the weather of Chennai before going for a South India trip

If you have to buy a railway ticket or wanna know about the airfare too

And above all of that, you don’t have internet working at home or where you are, look no further.

Google has all the answers to your ifs.

Google India has launched a newer version of its SMS Search service that allows users to SMS their query to 9-77-33-00000 at the cost of a regular SMS and get instant answers.

In the past, cricket scores and astrology updates on SMS used to be very helping to a lot of us until seeing the premium charges associated with short code services.

But that is where Google scores over others. It takes normal SMS charges from you.

Services

• Instant Cricket Scores: type cri or cricket India
• Railway queries: Send the PNR number to know the confirmed/RAC reservations
• Stock quotes: type company_name quote e.g. infosys stock
• Horroscope: type your_sunsign and send. e.g. Scorpio
• Local search: you can use like Restaurant esplanade Kolkata to find the food courts around that place inside Kolkata. Right now there are 34 cities for that.
• Movie theaters/ show times: type movies city e.g. Fashion Mumbai
• Flight status: type flight_name e.g. lt 302
• Get Definitions: type define word

There are also unit conversions and etc.

So do you think its gonna be beneficial (its not revolutionary by any means but its cheap)? Or do you find another Google marketing strategy to push ad markets into mobiles (as Yahoo has already targeted?)? Write to us