Donna Bogatin has been exploring the ramifications of Microsoft's TellMe acquisition and she not only provides some interesting stats, but also makes some good points points:

• TellMe services are used 2 billion times a year by 1 in 3 Americans… without most of us even realizing we're using them
• Nearly half of all directory assistance calls use TellMe
• New TellMe services include TellMe by Mobile… which allows people to simply say what they're looking for on a mobile device to get maps, directions, and other search information
• Microsoft has had a profitable mobile business for a while… Google doesn't expect to see money from mobile until 2008

Bogatin's point in publishing all of this is to underscore the fact that Microsoft has suddenly become much more threatening to Google's mobile efforts than Mountain View probably would have considered it 6 months ago.

But we've seen Microsoft do this before.

Some companies will go blow-by-blow through a battle.  But when you're Microsoft you just don't have as many companies that can really keep up blow-by-blow.  So like a big wild cat, Microsoft will sometimes go straight for the jugular when it finds a company that could put up a fight.

And that's exactly what I think they've done with TellMe.

Why didn't Google jump at something like this?  Maybe they were too busy trying to make YouTube into something…

- Matt