Read this article on voice services at Google. Back to the future.

I envisioned, founded and launched - with the help of John Borthwick, founder of Betaworks - AOL By Phone. That was ten years ago. We acquired Quack; a voice recognition company, to help launch it.

The service still works. It combines email, voice mail-location based services; mapping and more onto your phone. You could browse the web via voice; have your email read to you; and even respond. It was fast and very accurate. You could ask for a phone number; a map and directions; a movie time; a sports team score; and then place a call. It leveraged our data in MapQuest and Moviefone and Digital Cities. It used presence from AIM and our technology and platform in email.

Click here to read about the service. It was a logical and real competitor to Tellme.

We launched it at AOL as a pay for play service at $5.00 per month. We reached about 400,000 subscribers at the height of its popularity.

Then AOL formally created a voice services division and added many new products to the mix: VoIP; great wireless services; office based voice mail; and phone services off of AIM.

We were early leaders and innovators in voice services at AOL.

We were gently pushed to stop our work there because voice became a central part of a cable company’s business model. Hence we had creative disruption going in two divisions within a gigantic company. Guess who won?

It is interesting to see how truly innovative we were a decade or more ago on so many interactive service areas. It just goes to show there is nothing new under the sun.