Yesterday, Google announced that they have added a "click-to-call" emergency number feature into Google search results for mobile users in 14 countries. While Google has been displaying emergency numbers at the top of search result pages since last November, but were unable to simply click on the number displayed.
The feature will display numbers for commonly needed emergency numbers such as police, firefighters, ambulance services, poison control, and suicide hotlines.
Google has accomplished this latest improvement by harnassing the technique used by their mobile ad team when clicking on a phone number result when browsing through ads for local businesses. This new feature makes getting in contact with these important hotlines one step easier and quicker.
Unfortunately, this feature still needs to be sorted out some, as the system used to determine where a user is located relies upon what locale is specified inside the phone. For instance, I live in Germany, but I have my locale set for English USA, which would give me unhelpful USA number results when I would be in need of German numbers.
The 14 countries with the support are: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Image from Android Central
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