Google drops SMS Search, nudges basic phone users toward smartphones

If you're still wielding a basic feature phone, you may be familiar with Google SMS Search: it's a handy tool that lets you text a search query and get a quick result. Or rather, it was a handy tool. Google now confirms that it quietly dropped the service within the past few days, delivering an automated shutdown warning to anyone messaging the short code. A Google employee explains the closure as a simple "streamlining" effort, although we've reached out for greater detail. It makes sense that ...