Today is a big day for Google India users as Google just launched Google SMS channels and Google In Quotes. The Google SMS channels is for Indian Mobile users allows them to get updates via SMS. It is a major announcement by Google to uproot the market players like SMSGupShup (by Webaroo) which allows you to create free group SMS across India.
Google India has come up with the coolest new Labs feature called "Google SMS Channels" which lets you create channels to which anyone can subscribe (or invitation or openly), and then you can send the whole group any sms you want. It also allows to automatically fetch messages from an RSS feed, google group, blogger blog or google news (by keyword). The best thing is that it is totally free and does not merge ads along with the message (unlike other providers of this kind of a service in India).
Once you subscribe to it using your mobile number, you can get notified of every post and get daily dosage of technology and gadgets on the go.
Google SMS channel service is designed to enable users to send free group SMS messages. Currently, in a pilot phase, Google is testing the product in India and intends to launch it to global audiences later. It supports English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada languages. No commercial date for the launch has been announced.
The SMS channel was fully conceptualised by Google India Labs. Prasad Ram, head (R&D), Google India, says, “The SMS channel is in line with our endeavour to connect the 250-million mobile subscribers who have no access to information.”The service currently does not use any form of advertising in the messages but it might be added after the commercial launch.Unlike other group SMS providers, Google’s SMS channel does not add any advertisement on the message footer, so group publishers get full 160 character messages to post. But Prasad is not ruling out monetary opportunity from embedded advertisements during the commercial launch. “Banner advertisement and contextual marketing can be among many ways to monetise this channel.”At present, Google allows publishers to create individual channels and publish content that other users can subscribe to after registering with valid mobile numbers.
Google expects non-governmental organisations (NGOs), corporates and schools among others to create groups over SMS for communication and regular updates.Subscribers to this service can currently join as many as 30 channels. He would however not receive more than 10 SMS messages a day.Message senders can deliver the message using a web based interface and the subscribers can set the time when they want to receive the messages.
The Google service looks like an improved version of existing group messaging services such as Zook, SMSgupshup and Mytoday. Zook had recently announced an alert service that enables users to track local shopping deals or movie and content updates such as events, weather, traffic, cricket news among others. Google’s SMS channel can work great for publishers as they get a dedicated marketing hook to keep users engaged, which none of the other services offer. For instance, a neighbourhood bookstore on SMS channel can inform subscribers about new titles and special offers.
