GOOG-411 Free 411 Service Expands to Canada

Google has a free 411 service in the United States, it helps us to find the local businesses and phone numbers and allow us to connect to that business. Now it seems to expand this service to other countries starting from Canada.

This news is not announced by Google yet, most probably they are still testing this new feature. Garrett Rogers of ZDNet.com reported this news. He tried to test drive the service again and heard the prompt, “What city and province?” Since in the US we don’t use the word province, he tried “Regina Saskatchewan” and the Google’s answering service GOOG-411 said, “Please say a business name or category”.

I also tried the same and it worked when I said “Toronto, Ontario”. You can test your cities and province and see whether it works or not.

To try this feature dial from any phone 800-GOOG-411 (or 1 800 466 4411). It is free service just like most of other Google services.

I read in an article before, Google was not trying to supplant the local 411 services which usually charges for every call, but rather using it as an experimentation tool for possible voice enabled applications in the future.

Rogers found that this service only works for Canada besides the US. He tried London, England, it didn’t work.

If you haven’t tried this 411 service, you should it is a free service and an effective one. You can see how it works in the video.