Google has allowed you to speak your search to it on the desktop and mobile devices for some time, but now it's going to get smarter -- talking back to you and continuing the conversation you started. Google shared details at its Google I/O 2013 developer event today and also in a blog post that's gone up. The idea is that your devices --  smartphone or desktop -- will apparently be constantly listening for the "OK Google" command. If you say that, then it knows you want to do a search. That command is already used as part of Google Glass in a similar way ("OK Glass") -- and onl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Google Now | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Almost exactly three years ago then Google employee Marissa Mayer described "the perfect search engine" in an interview with IDG News. She said it would be one "that could understand speech, questions, phrases, what entities you're talking about, concepts. It would be able to search all of the world's information, [find] different ideas and concepts, and bring them back to you in a presentation that was really informative and coherent." Mayer went on to add: There are a lot of different aspects of research that need to go into building that search engine. You need to understand speech. You [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Google Now | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Google announced they have added 13 new languages to Google Voice Search. The new languages include Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, European Portuguese, Finnish, Galician, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak and Swedish. This brings the total tally of supported languages in Google Voice Search up to 42 languages supported. Google says that adding these 13 new languages enables an additional 100 million new speakers to use the feature. Was it easy to add these 13 new languages? Some were, but some were not Google said: Each new language usually requires that we ini [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Voice Search

Google announced an enhanced version of Google Voice Search today with some pretty awesome interaction in answers. Android 4.1 users sort of have it already. iOS users will have it in a few days. The rest of the Android world, 4.0 and below? They'll stay waiting. Answers, Not Search Results Google's long offered Voice Search for both Android and iOS platforms. What Google showed today was the latest version integrated into the Google Search app for iOS, where asking questions doesn't bring back just search results pages but actual answers. Search for the weather, and you get the weather d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Features: Analysis | Google: Voice Search | Top News

No sooner did I hit "publish" on my earlier post, Google’s "Voice Assistant" Not Quite Siri-Smart But Most People Won’t Notice, than people on Twitter started responding that I was out of my mind. A couple of people cited a Piper Jaffray study, published yesterday, comparing the accuracy and breadth of Siri "search results" vs. Google in a "street test" in Minneapolis. Google Gets a "B+" Siri Gets a "D" In short Google was graded with a "B+" in terms of accuracy, while Siri got a "D." It's really an "apples to oranges" comparison, however. Let's take a look at the methodology. Piper J [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search

At Google I/O this week Google introduced spoken search results, which mimic Siri's functionality on the iPhone. Siri had been a major point of differentiation between Android handsets and the iPhone, despite Google's preexisting voice search. The new Google female voice actually sounds less like a machine and more natural than Siri. And there are already a number of video demos favorably comparing Google's "Voice Assistant" to Siri (see below). Since Google didn't give her a name (or not one that we've heard yet), I'll call her "JB" for Jelly Bean. The following side-by-side video belo [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Google Now | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice | Google: Voice Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

Buried among the sexy hardware announcements and hair-raising Google Glass demo this morning were some fairly radical changes to the Google search experience for mobile devices. To date Google has been compensating for the awkwardness of the PC SERP on smartphones with voice search and other marginal "fixes." Today it took a potentially major step toward offering a distinct search experience designed specifically for mobile that may bury the "old" mobile SERP. The familiar smartphone mobile SERP is still there and probably will continue to be shown in a majority of cases. But these new e [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Google Now | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Siri is popular but its usage is limited, according new survey research from Parks Associates. The firm surveyed 482 iPhone 4S owners and asked about their usage of the virtual assistant. High level findings from the survey were published today by the Wall Street Journal. Parks Associates found the following: 87 percent iPhone 4S owners use Siri at least monthly Roughly one third of iPhone 4S owners use Siri "almost daily" Initiating calls and texts were the most common Siri-related activities 26 percent use Siri to send email daily More "advanced" functions such as calendaring [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Voice Search | Top News

The Wall Street Journal is out with a story saying that Google is about to make one of the biggest changes in its history of offering web search, providing more direct answers and gaining "semantic" smarts to understand more about what words mean. I'm scratching my head, since Google already does this. Methinks Google's PR has exploded in ways it didn't expect. Beyond Blue Links! From the story, we learn things such as: Over the next few months, Google's search engine will begin spitting out more than a list of blue Web links. It will also present more facts and direct answers to queries at [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Squared | Google: Voice Search | Google: Web Search | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Photosynth | Search Engines: Powerset | Search Features: Shortcuts | Top News | Wolfram Alpha

We've heard the search-related mantra "answers not links" so many times over the past few years that it sounds like a cliche. However in a mobile context the phrase has more meaning: a page of Google search results is ill-suited to the mobile use case. While Google has done many things to make it easier to get data and queries into smartphones with voice search, visual search, specialized apps and Google Instant the company still doesn't deliver "answers." It delivers a mobile-optimized version of its PC experience. Google now faces an "innovator's dilemma" of sorts as it seeks to adapt [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

As is being widely reported Google has bought startup Clever Sense, which earlier this year launched the local-mobile recommendations app Alfred. Alfred is like "Pandora for the real world" and was dedicated to creating a comprehensive "interest graph." Clever Sense assigns or maps physical places to one another based on styles, characteristics and attributes in the same way that Pandora does for music. However this process is all done by "artificial intelligence." Here's how Clever Sense itself described the functionality behind Alfred: The Extraction Engine built into the Clever S [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Acquisitions | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

When you first begin using Siri it’s not entirely clear what you can do with it. (It's also not clear how to access it.) Yesterday Danny wrote up some initial thoughts/criticisms of the Siri local search experience. In this piece I'm going to offer some general thoughts comparing Siri (on an iPhone 4S) with Google Voice Actions on my current phone (Android EVO) as well as some head to head examples of queries on both. Siri Leans on Google If you say to Siri, "What can I ask you?" it returns a list of the categories of things it can do. However when I rephrased the question slightly and ask [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

It sounds great. Speak into Siri about some local need, get nice results from Yelp's reviews. In reality, it's pretty easy instead to end up stuck with only a phone number and directions from Google Maps. From Siri To Yelp To Google Maps Consider this example, which illustrates the situation I've repeatedly found to be true with Siri: I asked Siri for "Places to eat." It pretty awesomely interpreted that to mean nearby restaurants, a natural language query that Google Voice Actions, as I've tested them, disappoints on. Selecting a restaurant from the nice list, which comes from Yelp and [...]

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Beyond some of the processing and other technical upgrades in the new iPhone 4S, the standout feature of the new device is the Siri "Assistant." It's an expanded and enhanced version of what's behind the existing Siri iPhone app, which is being shut down on October 15. And while Siri is not a "voice search engine," people will certainly use it to find information and accomplish tasks they might otherwise have used search or apps to complete. Siri is more "transactional" than search, taking users to an "answer" or a page where a task can be completed (e.g., making a reservation on OpenTable, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Features: General | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

The Siri voice search assistant that Apple demoed today as part of its big press event looks pretty impressive. If it works as shown, it'll go a long way in patching up one of the big weaknesses the iPhone has had versus Android, that of lacking built-in voice commands. Voice Actions: A Spoken Magic Wand I've used various Android phones with Google Voice Actions since Google first rolled them out in August 2010. They're amazing. Press on the search button, speak a command, and the phone works its magic. It's very, very cool. I got a reminder of that a few months ago when visiting with a f [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Features: Analysis | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Top News

The Apple iPhone keynote just ended and as you probably already know there was no iPhone 5. What was announced was an interim iPhone 4S, which has a faster processor, iOS 5, improved camera/video camera and will work with both CDMA and GSM networks. So it's a "world phone." In the US it will reportedly be offered by three out of the four major carriers. T-Mobile was left out. However the phone doesn't appear yet on the Sprint website. The Wall Street Journal had run a much publicized article on how Sprint was paying $20 billion over three years to Apple for some kind of exclusive on the [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Top News

Mobile innovation is fueling Google's search offerings for the desktop, as the company today announced two new search interfaces -- Voice and Image -- inspired by mobile Voice Search and Google Goggles, respectively. With Voice Search for the desktop, which is a feature of the Chrome browser, users click a microphone icon in the search box, and then speak into their computer's microphone. Part of the idea, according to Google execs speaking at a media event in San Francisco, is to make voice search ubiquitous and increase awareness, to increase adoption. Already, mobile speech inputs t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Images | Google: Voice Search | Top News

Google's Shopper mobile app is being introduced for iPhone. It already exists for Android devices. Shopper allows users to search for products by voice, with the camera, via barcode scan or by text entry. Users can also share products on Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email. Google Shopper shows prices, product reviews and local inventory availability (where that data exists). It goes up against eBay's RedLaser, Amazon's apps and a number of other price comparison, reviews and mobile shopping apps. The common use case for Shopper and most other mobile shopping apps is the following: cons [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Google: Mobile | Google: Product Search | Google: Voice Search

Traditional search on Google is already personalized (and has been for some time), and now the company has announced that its Voice Search service can also be personalized. With personalized voice search, Google will use recordings of your voice search to "build a speech model" that's tied to your Google account. In doing so, Google says it can do a better job of speech recognition and improve search results, accordingly. "Although subtle, accuracy improvements begin fairly quickly and will build over time," Google says. Personalized voice recognition shows up as a new option in the Goog [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Personalized Search | Google: Voice Search

Chitika has just published some very interesting data about voice search on the iPhone. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that about 25 percent of queries on Android devices are voice-initiated. That's an unexpectedly large percentage. By comparison Chitika's research director Dan Ruby said that he found about 7 percent of Google searches on the iPhone are voice searches. Interestingly he also said that voice searches are "three times more likely to be looking for local results" than searches on Google's browser site or text-entered queries on the Google iPhone app. Here's the compar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Voice Search