

Voice search enabled on Google homepage (Chrome) - res0nat0r
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/voicesearch.html

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snar
Did anyone else feel uncomfortable with Chrome turning on the mic, recording
sound and posting it to a foreign server without asking whether it was allowed
to? Feels like this could be abused. Would have appreciated an "Allow
goolgle.com to access your microphone?" security question.

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stuartmemo
I'm ok with it. Much in the same way I don't expect to be asked if it's ok to
send data to their servers every time I do a normal text search.

In what way do you think it could be abused?

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nikron
It's one of those web things, without a prompt it feels like any site ever
could just recording through the mic and saving it.

~~~
tuxychandru
Didn't you have to click the mic icon before it started recording anything?

~~~
fgm2r
Yes, but I don't know what the mic icon is. Does it just call a function? Is
it a Chrome-provided icon that is always on top? Can the menu that is shown be
edited by the website?

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MatthewPhillips
It calls a browser function, not a javascript function.

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encoderer
On blind faith alone, I have to imagine this will be improved significantly
going forward.

I use Google's voice recognition algorithms/systems on my Android phone all
the time. Every day. Often to dictate complete SMS and Emails, while I'm
driving, via my car's AD2P bluetooth mic, with all the ambient noise/etc
present in a car on the interstate. (Though to be fair it's not an aftermarket
bluetooth solution and I'm sure the mic is high quality and well placed.)

It is _very_ good. The most common type of mistake -- and still rare at that
-- is stuff like "let's not go until..." is transcribed as "let's not going
tell" and stuff like that.

When I first started using the voice features when I got the phone (HTC Evo),
i was _blown away_ at the quality of the results.

And of course, Google has been practicing this stuff for a very long time.
Everybody knows about Goog-411 (which was heaven before I got a smartphone)
but does anybody else remember the little gimmick Google Labs page where you
can click on the page, then call the number it displays for you, speak your
query into the phone, and then right before your eyes your page reloads with
your query and results.

That was at least nine years ago.

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BasDirks
Non-native English speaker:

    
    
      Haskell web frameworks - √.
      Tigers in India - √.
      Friedrich Nietzsche - what is a meter.
      Programming best practices - √.
      Contemporary philosophy - √.
      I bet you look good on the dance floor - √.
      Random beatboxing - the gap at the top of the pita pit.

~~~
Perceval
Native English speaker – I had the same problems with non-Anglo names. It
seems to discount the possibility that one is searching for a foreign name (in
my case, an Italian name), and instead tries to interpret the name as if it
were an English phrase.

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zkirill
This is a big step – millions of people becoming more comfortable with
searching for information just by speaking to their computer. Historical
moment.

~~~
cantbecool
This technology has been around a few years. If I'm not mistakken, wasn't
voice search originally implemented on the Google iPhone application? Now with
the proliferation of microphones on computers, it makes sense for Google to
implement this feature on the Google webpage.

~~~
zkirill
Yes, technology was around for years but it was just made more accessible to a
much larger demographic.

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alphadog
Interestingly enough, I notice it on <http://www.wunderground.com/> homepage
using Chrome.

Not exactly sure how they're using it?

~~~
ch0wn
All you need to do is add the x-webkit-speech attribute to the desired input
element:

<input name=query x-webkit-speech>

~~~
mildweed
[http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-a...](http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-
api-draft.html)

I, for one, can't wait till Android and iOS implement this.

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mshafrir
Seems like this is using the HTML5 speech input API.
[http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-to-your-
computer-...](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-to-your-computer-
with-html5.html)

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dereg
Does anybody know a keyboard shortcut to activate the voice search without
having to click on the microphone?

~~~
discipline
Yeah, seriously. Also, from the Google web site: "Searching without typing Use
it in the kitchen, in the garage or anytime your hands might be full."

Oh, really? I want to see you move your mouse pointer into position and click
the microphone...anytime your hands might be full. Silly bints.

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greendestiny
Just went 0 from 4, anyone getting good results? Not ruling out a bad mic or
pronunciation on my end, although I imagine because searches are short and
abstract they could be pretty hard to parse.

~~~
natesm
I sent a bunch of Cocoa classes at it, for no other reason than that's what's
on my mind right now.

NSView -> "nfcu". OK, fair enough.

NSViewController -> "nfcu controller". OK, I guess.

CAAnimation -> "salvation".

This is probably a place where that controversial "profiling" could probably
help, since I'm an atheist Cocoa developer.

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fbnt
For those of you who gets redirected to the localized version of google
without the new feature, go to <http://www.google.com/en>

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pbhjpbhj
Well apart from "coca cola" it didn't get any of my search phrases right, a
couple of words that seemed to be based on past search history though ....

"paulstretch" = balls "poor" = p __* [presumably 'porn'?] "text to speech" = x

etc.

Just tried "pepsi" and get 'speech not recognised'. But for "pepsi cola" I get
the right search ...

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mbenjaminsmith
Didn't work for any query. Crashed my browser once (Chrome 14.0.794.0 dev / OS
X 10.6.7).

~~~
xorglorb
Works just fine on 14.0.797.0.

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antimora
I noticed I finish searching by typing faster and more accurately than
speaking into the mic. I understand the data collected by Google is valuable
for its own use but what's the real benefit to the user?

~~~
Qz
Theoretically they use said data to make the speech search better.

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zrog
It works pretty well for calculations. Tried phrases like "natural log of 77",
"80 miles in kilometers", "17 times pi" and got the correct answer. Cool!

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revorad
Combined with the best search engine in the world, this is nothing short of
magical. We _are_ living in the future.

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jmjerlecki
Now all we need is google instant with voice capabilities. I would like for it
to predict what I am going to say.

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grimen
Too bad it' hardly working though. =( 7/10 was totally failing.

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elithrar
"Please note Voice Search is available for US English only."

Damn, and there I was going to search for Crocodile Dundee quotes.

~~~
zantzinger
I can't go to google.com without being automatically redirected to
google.co.uk. (I'm in the UK).

~~~
revorad
There's a link at the bottom which says Go to google.com.

~~~
zantzinger
Thanks - link at the bottom (I'm blind!).

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nishantmodak
When I see this - I really appreciate how good 'Watson' is with speech to
text!

~~~
kgermino
Watson had no speech to text, the questions were fed to it as text.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Operation>

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rokhayakebe
Yeah, I got "Hacker News" after four times. Now it would be nice if I could
say "Open" then it clicked on the first result.

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zackattack
Gonna be great for searching lyrics

