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It's pretty well understood (and was at the time) that the project was aimed at collecting voice sample data for further voice-recognition and AI work:

"Google Shuts Down GOOG-411" (October 9, 2010)

The service has helped Google build a large database of voice samples and improved the voice recognition technology. Here's what Google's Marissa Mayer said about GOOG-411:

"The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we're trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy."

<https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/10/google-shuts-down-...>

""The 411 Parable": Make sure you are playing the same game." (2011)

But just when the "head-to-head" competition was rolling Google announced GOOG-411 was no more... they'd captured all the human speech they needed to train their algorithms and were on to bigger and better things... Huh, voice recognition... algorithms?

<https://web.archive.org/web/20130810032940/http://buildconte...>

Not that the sudden death didn't kill what was at the time a useful service, and squander goodwill in the process.

Google has squandered so much good will over the years. This is a good example: expenses wouldn't even be a rounding error, and it could have given so many average folks a positive experience with the company.

It probably would have turned into a customer service line for all of their products they notoriously fail to adequately support.

This is a good theory and may have been an actual motivation to shut it down.

This isn't what goog-411 was. You would dial Google's 1800 number, and then tell a voice prompt the name of the business and location, and google would try and automate looking the business up and then route the call for you by ringing them automatically. In the pre-smart phone era, this would allow you to call a business with just your dumb phone. GOOG-411 is completely worthless in the smart phone era (discontinued in 2010).

It's worth mentioning that goog-411 enabled at least a couple very niche internet subcultures in the early 2000's. When skype brought in free 1800 calling, GOOG-411 could be used as a way to dial any business with skype for free (so no credit card info associated with an account). Think Xbox live lobbies but its a dozen kids on a call, muted, and taking turns unmuting to prank call (harass) businesses all day. I watched a childhood friend spend a summer doing this with a group he met playing mmo's/forums, two of which ended up making it as famous streamers over a decade later. I imagine this experience is very common for a type of kid that grew up online in a certain era (mw2), and google could probably see the tool was garnering a disproportionate amount of abuse

("Do you guys have battletoads?")

This isn't what goog-411 was. You would dial Google's 1800 number, and then tell a voice prompt the name of the business and location, and google would try and automate looking the business up and then route the call for you by ringing them automatically. In the pre-smart phone era, this would allow you to call a business with just your dumb phone. GOOG-411 is completely worthless in the smart phone era (discontinued in 2010).

It's worth mentioning that goog-411 enabled at least a couple very niche internet subcultures in the early 2000's. When skype brought in free 1800 calling, GOOG-411 could be used as a way to dial any business with skype for free (so no credit card info associated with an account). Think Xbox live lobbies but its a dozen kids on a call, muted, and taking turns unmuting to prank call (harass) businesses all day. I watched a childhood friend spend a summer doing this with a group he met playing mmo's/forums, two of which ended up making it as famous streamers over a decade later. I imagine this experience is very common for a type of kid that grew up online in a certain era (mw2), and google could probably see the tool was garnering a disproportionate amount of abuse

Would that have been so terrible?

If you're a company trying to make as much money while spending at little money as possible, yes.

I'm still using 2 RSS readers (Inoreader and TheOldReader) that I switched to after Google Reader shut down.

Aha! Minor blast from the past. I just realised my a/c might still be alive on there and there it was. I think I logged in after 3 or 4 years. Old Reader. I think I had deleted my a/c on Ino Reader. I used to follow couple of niche Hindi blogs and they shut down years ago; some Engish language as well (from all over the world). Most of them were anon. I kept coming back for years but they were gone. That's what killed the RSS/blogs for me, not the demise of Google Reader. It stopped being the place I knew in my own individual/idiosyncratic way.

I suspect something similar would happen to podcasts for me, maybe sooner than I am hoping for. And podcast player apps.

The true Google way, someone got a promotion and then the product dies.

Even their SMS api (GOOGLE) was shut down. That was just an automated google search and didn’t have to be staffed. Used it all the time to ask a trivia question or convert some units or get nearby locations. Like text pizza and my zip code and it would reply with 3 names and phone numbers. It made dumb phones smart.

Yeah but... who still uses dumbphones?

Ever been in an airport with no WiFi and overloaded cell towers? Text doesn't use much bandwidth no matter how it's transmitted (SMS, RCS, or data).

My "daily driver" is a dumb Consumer Cellular Link II.

SMS based services are useful to me when traveling without my laptop.

Cha-Cha was first

It would be somewhat niche, but if you have an iPhone and somehow wanted the Hey Google reaction instead of Siri, could still find use as a hands-free information source.

How about calling 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478) now ?

Wonder how many queries which the university is calling can now be automated

Where’s the joy in that? We don’t have to replace humans for everything.