It’s been several months since we’ve heard much of anything about Google’s 411 service. The company has kept somewhat mum about the project. As of December 2007, it was reportedly unprofitable. But hey, maybe that’s the cost of going free with information which used to cost callers when seeking phonebook listings.
It actually turns out Google has been active on the 411 front since we last spoke of it. What were they up to? Cataloguing Canada, according to Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
It is certainly unfortunate that Canadian consumers are often the people to get the short-ended stick for technology releases. Just look at the iPhone. It’s traveled all around America, and even hopped the Atlantic to travel Europe a bit, and Canada is only now getting some fair-and-balanced treatment with the advent of Apple’s 3G edition next month. So it’s too bad that Canada has belatedly received support for GOOG-411. Better late than never?
Source: http://mashable.com/2008/06/22/goog-411-canada/
I had a chuckle reading this :
Google's engineers have done their best to make the service as Canadian-friendly as possible by incorporating some of the local language ticks.
"Although English is spoken in both the US and Canada, there are enough differences between the way it's spoken in the two countries that we engineered GOOG-411 especially for Canadian English," read a post on the official Google blog.
"We incorporated some Canadianisms such as "eh," "Traw-na," "Cal-gry," and, of course, "aboot."
The service is currently only available in English, but Google said it is working on a French version of the site.
Link : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...echnology/home
Source: 
Originally Posted by Funkin'
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