On Google’s SMS Service and Rich Metadata

For those unaware (though I don’t know how you could miss it in my del.icio.us links :), Google last week launched an SMS query service – meaning that you send a text of, say, “Starbucks boston MA” to GOOGL (46645) and about 15 or 30 seconds later you get text messages back with addresses and phone numbers for your results. Only cost is the charge for the text messages.

It’s not perfect – the Seattle Times in particular had some trouble with it – but I had a chance to test it out this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. I was searching for a Starbucks in Boston, and it pointed me straight to one by One International Place in Boston, where I was able to connect and check email, etc.

That experience, however, points to my one real wishlist item for the service – better metadata search. I don’t even drink coffee, you see – I can’t stand the stuff. But I do love wifi, and most Starbucks have it. Hence my quest for a Starbucks.

I’d love for Google to augment its local listings with that type of information, so that I could simply search “wifi boston MA” (and before you ask, yes, I tried it) and return the various venues that have it, as many do. This is already possible in one sense – you can search for “pizza” for example, and return results, but Google needs to drag the traditional Yellow Pages categories into this century. The local listings metadata could (and should, in my view) be much more in depth. Beyond wifi, it’d be great to be able to search for ambience (quiet/trendy/etc), or hours (early morning/24 hrs/etc), or conference center adjacent (near the Moscone/near Fenway/near the Hilton in x town/etc), and more. That’s the type of metadata that yields real value to visitors unfamiliar with an area, which is to me one of the more important use cases for a Google SMS-like service.

But for now, I give Google SMS a big thumbs up, as it’s quite handy. Try it, and I doubt you’ll be disappointed.