Voice Search is the second new technology next to page prerendering that Google introduced exclusively for Chrome web browser users yesterday on Inside Search. Android smartphone users may already be aware of Voice Search, as it is available for their devices. The majority of desktop users on the other hand are new to the concept of searching the Internet with their voice. The concept is not entirely new though. The Firesay add-on for the Firefox web browser added speech recognition to the browser. It only offered basic commands that included a search option. The project website has not been available for some time now, and it is unclear if the add-on will ever be available again.
Back to Google. The new voice search option is currently being rolled out to google.com visitors who open the search engine’s website in the Chrome browser.
A small microphone is displayed next to the search form if voice search is available. Users need to click on the microphone icon before they can use their voice to search Google. The only requirement is a connected microphone and the Google Chrome browser.
Take a look at the following video that introduces the new feature.
The feature is rolling out, and it may take weeks before all Google visitors get to see the microphone on the main Google page.
Probably the biggest usability issue is that you have to click the microphone before you can start speaking and searching. This slows down search noticeable, especially when compared to searching with the keyboard. It is also necessary to click again whenever you want to search anew.
We have not been able to test the feature yet, but have a few concerns. It is likely that text in the search form gets erased whenever the microphone is used to submit a new search to Google. It is also unlikely that there is an option to correct words with your voice, which means that it may be necessary to use the mouse and keyboard to do that.
It will also be interesting if the speech recognition algorithm will be able to identify English words from users from all over the world correctly. While that’s probably difficulty enough for the different English accents, it is without doubt even more difficulty when foreign users use the feature.
Related Articles:
Google Voice Extension For Google ChromePlay Google Voice Messages In Gmail
Google Voice Number Not Reachable
How To Make Free Calls From Your Computer With Google Voice
Google Voice To Get VOIP
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Ha ha! Yet a another attempt to personalize their users.
Lets all use this,
https://duckduckgo.com
This is a very useless Search engine, What sort of Search engine takes trillions of years to search for a simple bingo except this jackie wakie stone age search engine? Very useless
Also to use voice search, we need to use Chrome browser.
Nothing against the Chrome browser but I see a tactic by Google to make us use Chrome and increase their market share, clever deceivers.
*thumbs down*
Hmmm-live microphone in your office/home/bedroom, piped (more or less) directly to Google. What could go wrong? I’m sure they learned their lesson from that whole ‘StreetView’ situation….
Watch out though, because you will be seeing Damnyou Voice Search! I got some pretty funny searches!!! LOL
Hmm, will see how far they can go with this, it will fail i promise
I actually find the feature really cool. Admittedly, I’ve gotten some pretty jank interpretations- “español” ≠ “a study on,” Google- but it’s still cool.