Google is finally catching up with its competitors Yahoo and MSN in the iPhone race. Google has shown its master touch by launching application that will empower the iPhones with voice search feature. So long we have known voice-dialing features of mobile phones now its capability has been extended limits via this Google application. We can make search using voice commands. We need not type the search words in the iPhones. This comes as a great relief for people who use their iPhones to surf the internet. Microsoft and Yahoo had already included this feature sometime ago. The internet community waiting with surprise that Google hadn’t come up with this feature.
Microsoft’s TellMe service and Yahoo’s oneSearch were forerunners to Google’s new application. We cannot find any fault with the existing voice search features of Microsoft and Yahoo. They are highly accurate with their voice to text conversion. Now Google which has been lacking this functionality too has joined the voice search community. Applications for voice enable search expected to be made available through iPhone Apps Store by today. However, there has been no official announcement from Google or from the iPhone owner Apple.
As you can guess the voice search process involves the following steps. After enabling the voice search feature you will be talking your search query like you do while using the iPhone and Google receives the voice query and posts it to its server for the conversion. Once the voice is processed and converted to text Google’s regular search server will receive the search query and the results of the search will be returned to iPhone user. There might be a slight delay because of the additional step involved in the search procedure. Moreover, the accuracy of the conversion may be affected if the environmental noise is too high. If you use a headset you can avoid the awkward, hand to ears movement while making your searches through voice search.
Google voice search needs to go a long way to perfect its accuracy level. Sometimes the results returned can frustrate the user. There are no statistics or accuracy scale on the voice search from the Google engineers. They made a general statement stating that it is accurate enough to be useful for people who are bored of pecking the mini keys of the iPhone’s touch screen keyboard.
There are number of voice recognition software products that have highest level of accuracy in voice to text conversion. However, this is not an easy field there are too many parameters and all of them cannot be incorporated. Though Google’s voice conversion may not be 100%, having such a feature is an added bonus. Eventually when the technologies are perfected we will be able to see higher levels of accuracy. For now, Google’s voice search has been introduced only in iPhone and it will be free for the iPhone customers. Other mobile platforms have to wait longer before Google can extend its support on voice search for their phones.