Googlish Maxiumus!

What parts of the world Wal Mart doesn’t take over, I am now convinced Google will!

Here’s their most recent service feature offering. I believe it is destined to become their latest of many contributions to business history:

https://www.google.com/goog411/

Considering how much I HATE seeing a buck-seventy-five show up on my cell phone bill, falling in LOVE with this new Google service was easy!

Cool with a capital C, baby! They are now doing a 411 service! And it is FREE!!

Dial this number, speak your need, and you will be provided with the phone number and address of the business you are seeking. If you want a MAP or would prefer the info be texted to you, you can tell them that and it shall happen. Incredible!

There are plenty of business lessons we could take from this, like how cool it is they are using their resources to fill a gap, which is the basic formula for marketing in the first place: Look for a customer need and then find a profitable way to fill it! I’m eager to see if and how this will actually be a profit center or if its contribution is more on the brand-building side.

We could gleam the lesson from SWOT analysis that technology is everyone’s competition! That competition can be direct or indirect and that it is often very hard to see it coming! How many cellular service providers do you think considered Google their competition? Though some might argue this is a dangerous line extension, that Google is getting away from its core business and into something it doesn’t understand, it isn’t such an illogical leap to me. “Search” is their core business, after all.

Or, rather than trying to over analyze and look for lessons in this, we could just use this service and smile every time we save money! Hope you find it helpful!