I can’t remember exactly how I stumbled upon (no pun intended) this very exciting news but I did realize that this had been out since January and I only got to know about it today and that’s precisely the reason why I’m blogging about it.

It’s come to my notice that a lot of good, exciting, newsworthy things go on around us on a daily basis and we are almost completely oblivious to them. I believe that if you find something (a resource, a link, a download, whatever) that is useful not only to you but to someone else, publishing it (or telling about it) is doing great service. Those in the Social Network Services (SNS) space like to call it social bookmarking.

Google’s free SMS search is a service that enables you to access a number of Google’s search features online through SMS. So you could do things like language translation, check the meaning of a word, check the latest headlines, retrieve latest sports scores and even lookup Bible passages with it – all via SMS.

Why am I excited about it?
As at 2007, Africa had over 280 million mobile subscribers (Source: Blycroft Ltd.). GSM subscriber growth has been at an average of 62% annually (Source: http://www.gsacom.com). A considerable number of the handsets used in this region have basic functionality – voice and text. Due to their lack of complex features like web browsers, you could say that these devices are not capable of accessing data-rich applications.

Not so anymore. With Google SMS, handsets that were unable to access the mobile web have a chance of accessing useful online information. Whether it’s weather updates or latest sports scores, all this information can be retrieved using text messages.

What’s also great about it?
When a content provider provides a service via shortcode, the default pricing comes at about ₦50 or ₦100 per query. I was impressed when I learned that Google SMS search was doing ₦10 per query. Anyone who’s looking to retrieve vital information can now do so cheaply.

What else could be done?
I went through the list of services being offered and to be sincere, these are not the kind of services people around here will likely consume in large numbers: weather, glossary, translation, calculator? Ok maybe sports scores can be appealing to those who are on the move and will like to keep track of the scores of one of their favorite games but if local services that provide real value can be developed on this platform, we are looking at very good patronage. An example will be providing local listings search. It will be useful if anyone can search for certain businesses or products in their neighbourhood using the Google SMS service. This is just one of the many local services that can be provided.

How to use the service
To find out more information on how to use Google SMS search, please go here.