Google SMS search has been shut down

Hello all,<p>I'm CEO of DOTGO, which provides access to the internet using SMS.<p>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).<p>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".<p>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:<p><a href="http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/doc0001.1.0/" rel="nofollow">http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/doc0001.1.0/</a><p>I can't guarantee how long we'll able to provide access, but we will as long as we're technically able!<p>Stefan Gromoll [first initial dot lastname] @ dotgo.com Co-Founder &#38; CEO DOTGO 200 Varick St. #805 New York, NY 10014<p>Text "dotgo" to DOTCOM (368266) to find out more

Sometimes when a google service shuts down I think, "Hmm, what did that one do? I don't remember hearing about that."

I posted this when it was pulled a couple days ago, to no traction :/<p>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 responds "SMS search has been shutdown. You can continue to search the web at google.com on any device". This isn't exactly helpful for someone lost in an unfamiliar city without a smartphone or GPS.

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.<p>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 was always a huge evangelist for this service and it was incredibly useful to so many people I know. I'm both surprised and disappointed to see it go but I guess you can't serve ads via SMS (well, you can, but...).

People with feature phones are still going to need to find info, and this move shifts the traffic onto services with less resources than Google (eg. <a href="https://twitter.com/Telefact" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Telefact</a>). As additional services shut down due to increasing traffic, that traffic will move to the surviving services, until they all shut down.

Are Google having cashflow problems?<p>How come they're shutting down so many of their services?

If there really is a market for this, it shouldn't be too hard to recreate with the help of twilio and google APIs. The problem is getting paid, maybe you could charge a monthly fee or the users could agree to receive 1 ad for every X searches?

It seems to me that this service would be really, really handy in countries where Nokia bar phones are prevalent. I'd love to see how many people actually used this service in those areas, because it depriving those people of this service goes against Google's mission of providing the entire world with information.

I don't know which is more depressing, Google ruthlessly killing off a valuable service, or people being astonished by their doing so.

Google's new mission statement: "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful for a few years."

As per some of the suggestions here, just published a tutorial on building your own Google SMS search with Twilio: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5700331" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5700331</a>

How expensive can this be to run. They should just leave it up.

I think this has something to do with the fact that you can't monetize and sell ads through SMS.

What did Google SMS Search return exactly when you sent a text?