
Google’s “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome - dazbradbury
http://searchengineland.com/googles-impressive-conversational-search-goes-live-on-chrome-160445
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untog
The tech that powers this is astounding. But am I the only one that really
doubts this voice-powered future everyone seems to be aiming for? From Siri to
the Xbox One and Google Glass, there seems to be an overall assumption that
voice is the interface everyone will be using- but didn't we assume the same
when dictation software first came out years ago? That we'd all be dictating
our documents rather than typing them?

The only place voice control feels natural to me is when I'm in a room by
myself. So that rules out the office, public transportation, and my home,
except at rare moments. I'm actually quite happy about that- the last thing I
want is to be at work surrounded by people talking to their computers.

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shangaslammi
Agreed. Lip reading via the camera would be much nicer to use (although
probably an order of magnitude more difficult). :)

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bad_user
Mind reading would be even better. Until then, writing words with a keyword is
in many cases still the best way to provide input, without feeling awkward or
without bothering others.

And speech isn't weird in the same way that touch-screens felt weird for some
of us at first. Because touching the screen of your gadget does not annoy
other people.

Also, did anybody notice how awful speech recognition is for non-Americans?
And they just got in the habit of internationalizing things properly, now
we're going back to square one, except for the fact that learning to pronounce
things with an American accent is much harder than writing words in English,
so devices will annoy the heck out of us non-Americans, even if we know
English.

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nos4A2
No one is asking this, but why is this chrome only (Disclaimer: I am a Firefox
user)? is there a specific part that is tied to the native browser code
(microphone and speakers can be accessed though web languages)? [Note] the
tone of the question is curious and not accusatory

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mladenkovacevic
There was a session at I/O called "More Awesome Web" which seemed to imply
that a web audio API (which enables live microphone input) and a web speech
API (which enables voice-recognition driven apps) are both currently only
supported in Chrome. Here is a slide from that presentation:
<http://www.moreawesomeweb.com/#32> (just use the right arrow to progress
through the slides).

If that's what's holding up speech recognition for other browsers then
hopefully these APIs can become more widely supported, but at the same time I
don't think the demand for browser speech recognition is there yet. It makes
sense on your phone, but bending over your desktop or laptop in order to talk
to your computer somehow doesn't seem right yet.

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spankalee
Me: "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow"

Google: "Did you mean airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow"

Me: "Yes"

Google "According to Wikipedia, Yes are an English rock band who achieved
success with their progressive, art and symphonic style of music."

D'oh. If you're going to drop in an easter egg that asks a question, assume
the user who finds it will actually answer it.

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ElliotH
Despite numerous attempts I couldn't get it to recognise my british accent
saying 'Air speed' as anything other than 'Ass speed' or 'add speed'

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ElliotH
Oddly, it seems more accurate on my phone through Google Search/Now.

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cheald
Are you logged into your Google account on Chrome? I know that there's voice
personalization on the phone versions. I'd expect them to bring that to the
browser, too.

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RyanMcGreal
Remarkable. Chrome asked my permission to use my laptop's microphone and was
then off to the races. I followed the examples in the post but added, "What is
his dog's name?" The first result was the Wikipedia entry for Bo.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_(dog)>

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nthitz
Asked it "Who Made You?"

And Google Replied: "To paraphrase Carl Sagan: to create a computer program
from scratch, one must first create the universe." :)

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jordan_clark
1.) Rasberry Pi 2.) USB sound card 3.) Analog mic splitter: (plus other things
of course) -

Run small mic's and speakers to most commonly used rooms in house. Star Trek
computer search enabled.

Missing link: send results to (x) screen.

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JRobertson
CastleOS has demos that appear to be successfully demonstrating that the
Kinect makes a fairly cost effective voice receiver that can cover an entire
room.

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pwf
Do you have a link to this?

Edit: Nevermind, I read that as CentOS...

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d0vs
Not working for me. It displays "No Internet connection."

Edit: see <http://crbug.com/242861>

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danpalmer
I think the service is being hit pretty hard. I'm getting the same.

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arkitaip
I don't think that Google can be slashdotted ;)

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Achshar
It's not google.com. Chrome has speech recognition service that goes to
google's servers. And that service is being hit hard, not google.com.

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hnriot
This is coreference analysis with voice input backed by an ontology. Google
have done a good job pulling together these technologies.

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shellmayr
I'm not exactly an expert on search machine technology, so I'd be grateful if
someone was so kind to help me out here:

I did a "conversational search" asking "what's an amazing voice" and Google
returned a definition with a Youtube video of a woman singing. One of the
comments simply says: "Amazing voice!" Why is this listed as a definition?
What's happening here?

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Raphael
The comment defines that video as an amazing voice. Google's knowledge graph
has included this opinion.

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jonknee
The conversational aspect was one of the differences between Google Voice
Search and Siri (though it doesn't matter if you have conversation abilities
if you fundamentally don't work, but that's another debate). Interesting to
see the progress in this space.

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Newky
To me, this would feel more natural in something other than the search bar of
Google. When we make a new search, the thought process is that it is a
separate and new search.

Although we all know that searches are by no means stateless, they were
separate, unrelated questions in my mind previous to this. This makes
searching more like a conversation (hence the name) and means that the UI to
me does not fit this style. There is no record of what you searched before
this.

Imagine if your chat client was displayed in the same context. Google is only
including it in this way so that it gets the huge usage of its search engine,
but to me a more chatty UI would make this more obvious.

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sebastianavina
> To me, this would feel more natural in something other than the search bar
> of Google.

like in google glass?

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soemarko
Cute. Not something I'd ever use, but cute.

Overall it works, but it seems it can't pick up the word "one" and "reviews".
Or it's me who can't speak those words right.

Kept getting "Xbox ones you" and "Xbox won the fuse"

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jordanthoms
I can do voice searches, but the conversational aspect (asking "how old is
he?") isn't working, and I can't seem to get hotwording to either. Is this
still rolling out?

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qqg3
I get this problem too. Understands stuff just fine but semantic and
conversational stuff is broke.

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tannerc
Neat, but what's the practicality for the average user? Obviously there are
universal benefits for the disabled, but what comes next?

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Siecje
Why is Google so afraid of making a standalone application to run on desktops
and not in a browser?

Then you wouldn't need your browser open to use "OK Google"

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dragonwriter
> Why is Google so afraid of making a standalone application to run on
> desktops and not in a browser?

There is a big difference between "doesn't see the value in the added cost"
and "is afraid of".

> Then you wouldn't need your browser open to use "OK Google"

Chrome supports running in the background on startup (and prefers to do so),
so conceptually there is no reason anything that can be done in Chrome that
doesn't require on-screen UI couldn't be done without needing any application
"open" (at least, without the user taking the step of opening an application.)

Seems to me that, both from a strategic perspective and a UX perspective,
that's a more natural progression for conversational search than a separate
standalone desktop app.

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wiradikusuma
My Chrome is Version 26.0.1410.65 and "Google Chrome is up to date," but I
don't see it when opening www.google.com. I'm in Malaysia.

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d0vs
You have to use Chrome 27.

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drivebyacct2
Gr. I'm on Linux/dev/28 and no dice...

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gromy
It'd be nice if queries starting with "go to..." would automatically go to the
first result, ala I'm Feeling Lucky.

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swalsh
Thats cool... but i don't want to talk to my computer while in my cube. Useful
in my car though.

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VikingCoder
"What's my name?"

"Where am I going?" (If you use Calendar.)

"Who founded Google?" (I just thought this was impressive.)

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russellsprouts
Heads up, the conversational aspect only works if you have Search History
enabled.

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agildehaus
Works fine for me, search history disabled.

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staticfish
Would someone tell me exactly what makes this feature "controversial"? I am
seeing this exact same headline everywhere.

Is there any merit to it, or is it the standard linkbaity headline we've come
to expect.

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bockris
Did you misread the title?

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staticfish
Damn.

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g2e
Try asking "What's your name?" or "How are you?"

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varjag
Try "Beam me up, Scotty" :)

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fernandotakai
"who are you" is good too

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varjag
Hah!

Also, "what's my name"

