Google Voice Search or Search by Voice is a Google product that allows users to use Google Search by speaking on a mobile phone or computer, i.e. have the device search for data upon entering information on what to search into the device by speaking.
Initially named as Voice Action which allowed one to give speech commands to an Android phone. Once only available for the U.S. English locale – commands were later recognizable and replied to in American, British, and Indian English; Filipino, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
In Android 4.1+ (Jelly Bean), it was merged with Google Now.
In August 2014, a new feature was added to Google Voice Search, allowing users to choose up to five languages and the app will automatically understand the spoken language.
Google Voice Search on Google.com
On June 14, 2011, Google announced at its Inside Google Search event that it would start to roll out Voice Search on Google.com during the coming days.
Google rolled out the support, but only for the Google Chrome browser.
History
Google Voice Search was a tool from Google Labs that allowed someone to use their phone to make a Google query. After the user called (650) 623-6706, the number of Google Voice's search system, they would wait for the words Say your Search Keywords
and then say the keywords. Next, they would either wait to have the
page updated, or click on a link to bring up the search page the user
requested. At the moment, both the demo of this service and the page
have been shut down. Since the introduction of the service, products
from Google, such as GOOG-411, Google Maps and Google Mobile App, have been developed to use speech recognition technology in various ways.
On October 30, 2012, Google released a new Google Search app for iOS, which featured an enhanced Google Voice Search function, similar to that of the Voice Search function found in Google's Android Jelly Bean and aimed to compete with Apple's own Siri voice assistant.
The new app has been compared favorably by reviewers to Siri and The
Unofficial Apple Weblog's side-by-side comparison said that Google's
Voice Search on iOS is "amazingly quick and relevant, and has more depth
[than Siri]".
Of note is that as of May 2016 20% of search queries on mobile devices were done through voice with the number expected to grow.
Supported languages
The following languages and variants are partially supported in Google Voice Search:
- Abaza since 2021
- Afrikaans since 2010
- Albanian since 2020
- Amharic since 2017
- Armenian since 2017
- Azerbaijani since 2017
- Basque since 2012
- Bangla since 2017
- Bulgarian since 2012
- Burmese since 2018
- Catalan since 2012
- Czech since 2010
- Danish since 2014
- Dutch since 2010
- English (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, US), some variants since 2008 launch
- Filipino since 2013
- Finnish since 2012
- French since 2010
- Galician since 2012
- Georgian since 2017
- German since 2010
- Greek since 2014
- Gujarati since 2017
- Hebrew since 2011
- Hungarian since 2012
- Icelandic since 2012
- Italian since 2010
- Indonesian since 2011
- Japanese since 2009
- Javanese since 2017
- Kannada since 2017
- Korean since 2010
- Khmer since 2017
- Kurdish since 2021
- Kyrgyz since 2022
- Lao since 2017
- Latin
- Latvian since 2017
- Lithuanian since 2015
- Luxembourgish since 2020
- Macedonian since 2020
- Mandarin Chinese (Traditional Taiwan, Simplified China, Traditional Hong Kong) since 2009
- Malay since 2011
- Malayalam since 2017
- Marathi since 2017
- Mongolian since 2020
- Nepali since 2017
- Norwegian since 2012
- Persian since 2013
- Polish since 2010
- Pig Latin since April 1, 2011 but it was actually added and not just because of April Fools' Day, although it is not officially listed
- Portuguese (Brazilian; European since 2012)
- Punjabi since 2020
- Romanian since 2012
- Russian since 2010
- Serbian since 2012
- Sindhi since 2021
- Sinhala since 2017
- Slovak since 2012
- Spanish (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, US, Uruguay, Venezuela) since 2010 and Latin American Spanish since 2011
- Sundanese since 2017
- Swahili since 2017
- Swedish since 2012
- Tamil since 2017
- Telugu since 2017
- Turkish since 2010
- Urdu since 2017
- Uzbek since 2018
- Yue Chinese (Traditional Hong Kong) since 2010
- Zulu since 2010
- Vietnamese since 2015
Integration in other Google products
Google Maps with voice search
In
the summer of 2008, Google added voice search to the BlackBerry Pearl
version of Google Maps for mobile, allowing Pearl users to say their
searches in addition to typing them.
Google Mobile App with voice search
The
Google Mobile app for Blackberry and Nokia (Symbian) mobiles allows
users to search Google by voice at them touch of a button by speaking
their queries. See http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/app.html
for more information. Google also introduced voice search to all
"Google Experience" Android phones with the 1.1 platform update, which
includes the functionality on board the built-in Google Search widget.
In November 2008, Google added voice search to Google Mobile App
on iPhone. With a later update, Google announced Voice Search for iPod
touch. It requires a third party microphone.
On August 5, 2009, T-Mobile launched the MyTouch 3G with Google, which features one-touch Google Voice Search.
Google Voice Search in YouTube
Since March 2010, a beta-grade derivation of Google Voice Search is used on YouTube
to provide optional automatic text caption annotations of videos in the
case that annotations are not provided. This feature is geared to the
hearing-impaired and, at present, is only available for use by
English-speaking users.
