quack.com

voice portal company acquired by america online. quack.com was founded in 1998 by steven woods, jeromy carriere and alex quilici as a pittsburgh, pennsylvania, usa, based voice-portal infrastructure company originally named quackware. quack was the first company to try to create a voiceportal, or a consumer-based destination "site" in which consumers could not only access information by voice alone, but also complete transactions. quackware launched a beta phone service in 1999 that allowed consumers to purchase books from sites such as amazon and cds from sites such as cdnow simply by answering a short set of questions. quack followed on with a set of information services from movie listings (inspired by, but expanding upon, moviefone) to news, weather and stock quotes. this concept introduced a series of lookalike startups including much-heralded tellme networks which went on to raise more money than any single internet startup in history on a similar concept.