Future of Search: Google Launches Searches by voice on iphone

Google has been experimenting in a big way to increase its reach on mobile and in an effort to do that they have been experimenting with voice recognition systems on mobile phone. They have two services in India itself in Hyderabad and Delhi which offers a voice recognition search besides having it in US. Now Voice recognition offers lots of issues including the ability to handle different accents of users which widely varies specially in India but Google in a major move to take this service mainstream have launched an app to make voice search available on iphone. Now this is targeted at US users where iphone is very successful .According to NYT

Users of the free application, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

Now Google is not the first to offer voice search both Yahoo and Microsoft already offer voice services for cellphones. The Microsoft Tellme service returns information in specific categories like directions, maps and movies. Yahoo’s oneSearch with Voice is more flexible but does not appear to be as accurate as Google’s offering. The Google system is far from perfect, and it can return queries that appear as gibberish. Google also offers a video of how this service will work in perfect situations

Now it seems that Google is really devoting lots of people on this project so guys like Just Dial who have been dominating Indian voice search market better be beware considering the fact that they employ old fashioned call centres to do this which is way more expensive to scale.
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