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Before Smartphones, an Army of Real People Helped You Find Stuff on Google
Not too long ago, services like GOOG-411, 118 118 and AQA used actual humans to answer questions with witty responses and encyclopedic knowledge. Today’s search engines could learn something.
While directory enquiry lines still exist, Banfield worked during their boom—she answered hundreds of calls in her 5:30 pm to 2 am shifts—and quickly noticed patterns in people’s queries. As the evening crept on, callers asked for massage parlors or saunas—then they would call back irate after Banfield recommended an establishment that didn’t meet their needs. Gradually, the business built up a database of common Q&As, and like Banfield, Cockerton noticed patterns—a flurry of trivia-related texts during pub quizzing hours or requests for chat-up lines as the night went on.
Or read this on Wired
