Texting for a deal

Here's a tip that just about made me pee in my cheap ass pants. If you are shopping in a store and want to check the price of an item you are considering buying, text Google. The little elves at the behemoth Internet company will text you back what other retailers are selling the item for.

Send a text to 466453 (I still can't get over texting to a short number like that - shouldn't it be seven or ten digits, like a phone number?) with the word "price" and the item name. If you don't know how to text, learn.

I tested the number with "price Gap trouser" and got back two messages within 30 seconds. The good news is a lot of other folks are selling Gap pants for $10, which is a lot less than the $49.50 Gap is selling them for.

The bad news is the texts had insufficient information about where these alternative retailers are. They were identified only by name - fashionboulevard - without any address, city, Web site or phone number. Googling "fashion boulevard" led me to a site that sells clothes for adult dolls. None of the other retailers were mainstream enough that I recognized their names.

I tried it again and tacked my zip code on to the end of the message. No luck. My Google elf did not understand 91367 was my location and said my search did not return any product results. Oh well, I guess nobody is perfect, and that includes Google too. Perhaps the company is not quite ready to take over the world.

Note: there is a ton of other info you can get by texting Google, including weather, stock quotes, and movie times.