Ask Jeeves was doing this before Google existed…
Wonder if there a way bring any of these types of services back and be affordable? Like the part of chatting with older people. There are lots of old people in this world who would love to have some to talk with.
GOOG-411 was created specifically for Google to gather voice samples, with different ages, accents, etc. to train voice recognition. It was never for the sake of providing a service.
Ask Jeeves was a “question answering service” back then. They had a staff of human editors who curated answers to popular questions. Nothing they answered back then was done via search.
Source: I worked for a search engine startup in the 90’s that was acquired by Ask Jeeves when they realized they needed a true search technology since human editing wasn’t scalable.
I remember using ChaCha. Good times
I didn’t even know about these services. It’s fascinating they were relevant for about ten years only. What a good read.
I used SMS google search and SMS ChaCha, they were great at a time when mobile data was super expensive.
I remember texting chacha if every rose has its thorn, to which they would respond that according to the 1988 song released by Poison, every rose does have its thorn.
I can’t remember so many things from that part of my life, why that stuck, no idea.
That’s a fantastic song though. I didn’t grow up in that era, but it’s most of what I listen to these days.
118 118 had great ads. My friend and I dressed as the 118 118 guys for a sports event at work. :-D
