Google cancels one service and promotes another

Summary: It appears that Google has pulled the plug on their "click-to-call" ad program that promised to link search engine users to advertisers via telephone.  This news comes from a post that has since been deleted on the Official Google Blog.

It appears that Google has pulled the plug on their "click-to-call" ad program that promised to link search engine users to advertisers via telephone.  This news comes from a post that has since been deleted on the Official Google Blog.

Google Click-to-Call project cancelled
After concientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area. This message has been translated using Google language tools.

Microsoft rolled out a similar feature on Windows Live Local a few months ago -- but it's not yet linked up to their advertising program.

The part of the deleted blog post that I find most interesting though is: "This message has been translated using Google language tools."  The quality of the translation is pretty good when compared to most computer translated text.  We're not sure what the source language was, but could this be a sign that Google is about to launch statistical translation for languages other than Arabic?

Topic: Google

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  • Hack

    I am with techcrunch on this one: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/07/strange-things-afoot-at-the-google-blog/

    I think the blog was hacked which is why the message is a bit bizare, why someone would post that message if the blog instead of something funny I don't know! Doesn't seem likely that they will be pulling that product so soon though?!
    janamills
  • Google speculation is TOO rampant

    sometimes Google speculation is TOO rampant lately!

    This was a security breach...
    is it likely Google would cancel an Alpha service on a Saturday without even using proper English to explain themselves? No.
    exposure-online
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