51–59 of 59 posts
Wow, from that thread the service looks very useful(even if you have a smartphone with data). Wish I knew about it before the shutdown. I guess such is life in the Googleverse now: if you're unprofitable then you're "distracting us from our core mission". Who wants to make bets on the next service(s) to bite the dust? :)
I don't know which is more depressing, Google ruthlessly killing off a valuable service, or people being astonished by their doing so.
Which valuable service is being killed off here? I'd never heard of this before. Doesn't look like it is used very much.
I'm CEO of DOTGO, which provides access to the internet using SMS.
Good news: you can still access google's search service using the short code DOTCOM (368266). Just text "google" + your search term to DOTCOM (368266).
You can actually access a bunch of websites by texting the website's domain name to DOTCOM (368266). For example, try "cnn" or "nytimes" or "yahoo" or "gmail".
And if you have your own website, you can use DOTGO to make your own website SMS-accessible for free. Visit our website dotgo.com to find out how or check out this doc:
http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/doc0001.1.0/
I can't guarantee how long we'll able to provide access, but we will as long as we're technically able!
Stefan Gromoll [first initial dot lastname] @ dotgo.com Co-Founder & CEO DOTGO 200 Varick St. #805 New York, NY 10014
Text "dotgo" to DOTCOM (368266) to find out more
Wow, from that thread the service looks very useful(even if you have a smartphone with data). Wish I knew about it before the shutdown. I guess such is life in the Googleverse now: if you're unprofitable then you're "distracting us from our core mission". Who wants to make bets on the next service(s) to bite the dust? :)
Let's extend that idea to it's logical extent: http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not in lots of countries.
Nearly every single country is moving to smartphones. At wildly different rates and current penetration, but the vast majority of the world is going to be on smartphones in the near future. Companies who focus on the present and are obsessed with backward compatibility will inevitably find themselves behind more forward thinking companies.
SMS access is useful regardless of whether your handset is smart or dumb. SMS traffic often gets through when data cannot, either because of signal strength or circuit capacity. I have successfully used Google SMS search from my smartphone when it could not load Google.com in the browser--once to find the nearest hospital when dealing with a dangerous medical situation on a hiking trip. Better hope the 3G/LTE coverage is better in the backcountry now, I guess.
This is terribly short-sighted decision by Google.
I posted this when it was pulled a couple days ago, to no traction :/ Google says their mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' To me (and several others who have posted in that forum), this seems to be counterintuitive to that mission. Many people can't afford or don't want to pay for a smartphone or the data plan. When you try using SMS search now, google resp…
Sure, it isn't helpful for those without a data plan, but decisions doesn't exist in a present day vacuum. People with phones without data plans are a dying breed, and I think any reasonable person would focus their efforts on the premise that the world is moving toward smartphones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not in lots of countries.
it's a "dead man walking" everywhere. SMS has no future except death. in some regions that death will come later than others but that doesn't mean we're going to see a great SMS resurgence any time in the near future. nobody cancels their data plan and gets SMS instead.