Microsoft (MSFT) has never been much on giving things away. But, its new voice recognition acquisition, TellMe, is going to begin offering voice recognition directory assistance. For free. That’s right.

The theory over at the FT is that 411 will not longer be a service that is charged for by call. Over time, it will be advertising supported. And, those ads will run on your home phone, your cell phone, and your shoe phone. For the time being: "Angus Davis, one of Tellme’s founders, said his company would operate its service without advertising while it tried to perfect the user experience."

No one should be surprised that Google (GOOG) began offering free 411 service within the last couple of weeks. The media has been impressed with the results.

Google offers most of its services for free. It is so successful in the search text-based advertising business that it can test a number of other products and apparently feels no pressure to make money on these, for now.

Microsoft, on the other hand, charges for everything from its OS to its MP3 player. But, it has not done terribly well for its shareholders. While Google’s stock is up over 150% in the last two years, Microsoft’s has only risen about 18%, less than the S&P.

If the world’s largest software company would give away more of its products , perhaps its shares would perform as well as Google’s.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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