Google finds its way onto cellphones

Google has come to cellphones -- the cheap ones, not just the fancy color-screen models with Web access.

Over the last month, the popular search engine company has quietly turned on a new service that lets people use most newer cellphone models to get snippets of information by sending short text messages to a special five-digit number, 46645, which spells GOOGL on a phone keypad.

People looking for a list of pizza or Chinese restaurants in Back Bay, for example, just have to send the message "pizza 02116" or "Chinese 02116." Within 10 seconds or so, Google shoots back one or more text messages listing restaurants with addresses and phone numbers from its Google Local page. Related services from Google let users get a phone number by sending a message containing the desired person's first and last names and city, area code, or ZIP code; they can also use Google's Froogle shopping site to get a price quote by sending a text message with "price" followed by the item's name or Universal Product Code number.

Google's is among a handful of new services that give consumers a much cheaper, on-demand alternative to paying $5 to $15 for a monthly subscription to a plan like Verizon Wireless's Get It Now, Sprint's PCS Vision, or the mMode service offered by the former AT&T Wireless Services Inc., which is now part of Cingular Wireless LLC. With the Google service, users pay their carrier for only the cost of text messaging, typically 10 cents a message or less when subscribers buy monthly "buckets" of 100 or 500 messages.

The Weather Channel last month activated a service that offers 36-hour weather forecasts when people send a text message containing a ZIP code or city and state name to the number 42278, which stands for 4CAST. The Weather Channel, part of closely held Virginia media company Landmark Communications Inc., charges 75 cents per use, added to subscriber's phone bills, plus a charge for each text message.

Also last month, San Francisco start-up UpSnap Inc. launched a way for wireless subscribers to get free directory assistance listings for businesses as an alternative to paying $1.25 or more for calling 411 on their cellphone. Users have to start at the upsnap.com website, where they register their phone number and soon get a text message.

By keeping that message in their inbox, users can respond to that message with the name and either ZIP code, area code, or geographical location of a business. UpSnap sends back a new reply message with the phone listing. Recent tests, however, showed the service can take several minutes or even hours to generate replies. Like Google, the service is free except for the text charge from the phone company. The company makes its money from advertising.

Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystem, a Wellesley wireless consulting firm, said while the data available through the "short messaging" services (SMS) is limited, many consumers may find them easier to use than full-fledged wireless browser search sites.

"SMS is just a lot faster than the five or six clicks you'd have to go through on a Web browser phone," Lowenstein said. "It's also a way to deliver content if you don't have a fancy Web phone."

People who have only casual or occasional needs to use their cellphones to search for data will also do well with them, Lowenstein said. "You don't have to subscribe to this service. It's kind of an instant purchase," Lowenstein said.

Although SMS usage in the United States lags well behind Europe -- in part because voice calls cost comparatively much less and short messaging costs more here -- groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association estimate Americans send and receive 2.5 billion text messages per month. That's equivalent to an average of nearly 15 messages per month for each of the 171 million US cellphone owners, although "texting" traffic is heavily driven by a small minority of mostly teenage and 20-something users.

Google and The Weather Channel are among nearly 400 registered "common short codes" in use in the United States for text messaging. These are five-digit codes that can be reached on the networks of all major national carriers. Before the industry organized the five-digit code plan last year, promotional and informational text messaging services like these were generally either limited to a single carrier, or required people to enter different codes based on which cellphone company they use.

Eileen Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Google in Mountain View, Calif., said the company began deploying the service Oct. 7 because of its "goal to bring more of the world's information directly to users. We developed Google SMS to enable people who are away from their computers to quickly and easily get instant, accurate answers to specialized queries."

Among other services, users can get the definition of a word by sending a message such as "define bewildering" or just using the letter D to stand for define. Or users can take a stab at possibly getting a piece of information from the Web by sending a message that starts with G, for "Google," followed by the fact they hope to find, like "G population Rhode Island" or "G Fenway Park seats."

Rodriguez said the company had no numbers to release on how much traffic the service is attracting and still considers it a test, or beta, service.

"We're evaluating feedback from users to determine how to further enhance and improve the service," she said, including asking what other categories of information users want made available through SMS queries.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.