I've tried to use it a few times in different cities. It's horrible. The speech recognition is really bad and the listings it pulls up are way off the mark.

I've had just the opposite experience; The speech recognition is not perfect but is usually spot-on. I've only had to try more than once for a handful of things. There's only been one thing I never could get it to find - a local vegan restaurant named "Sluggo's".

But by and by it's been great for me and I use it ALL the time.

Don't forget that anyone can register as a business with Google 411, and once the submitted phone number is answered once (i.e. pass a simple validation test), the business "owner" can change the number to any other phone number, anywhere on the planet. So it's really quite kind of them to offer a service that allows you to call anywhere in the world for free.

I've found the service to be useful and was impressed with the accuracy of the voice recognition. Then again, I was also blown away with Jott early on only to have it butcher my words later. Joking aside, the 1-800-GOOG-411 service so far appears effective and very useful. At this point I'm good with helping train Google's speech recognition system with my "phonemes".

@WagCurious: A la Grand Central?

Blue. BLUE. BLUE!!!!!!!!