Google Voice Search on iPhone, and Blackberry

By Bryson Meunier, Natural Search Associate Director, Content Solutions

Blackberry users this week may have iPhone envy, given the fanfare surrounding Google's latest attempt to make mobile search more accessible: the Google Mobile App for iPhone with voice search. C-Net called it “awesome”, Information Week called it (mostly) “fantastic”, and though a number of reviewers pointed out the voice recognition software’s difficulty with accents, a technology writer for the NY Times called it “better than any speech recognition system I have used to date”. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of Webspam, is even using this amazing app to understand his cats.

This is great news for mobile searchers and those of us interested in seeing mobile search usage increase, and especially great news for iPhone users, who now even have more reason to be the most active segment of the population using content on mobile devices. It is not, however, great news for those of us with other devices, including Crackberry addicts like our president-elect, whose smartphone of choice starts with a B, not I, and who might like to search with voice themselves.

I would remind these people not to lose hope in the prospect of voice search at some point. It will likely happen sooner than later. Given that the Blackberry got the Google mobile App not long after the iPhone, it’s likely that you’ll be shouting directions into your phone soon enough.

In fact, you can use Vlingo to do it now. As I mentioned in a previous post, voice search has been available for Yahoo! for a while through Vlingo, and the Vlingo mobile app can be used to post Tweets on Twitter, status updates on Facebook, and search Google, all with your voice. If you’re interested in voice search and your smartphone of choice starts with a B, practice on the Vlingo app until Google brings voice search to Blackberry.

Interested in monetizing the increase in mobile traffic that mobile voice search might bring? Join us at SES Chicago on December 8 where I’ll be speaking on a panel called Mobile Search Battle Royal. Blog readers can save 20% on the price of admission by using my speaker code at registration: 20SPKER

1 comments:

Dave McAnally said...

I saw this too. Definitely cool. I hate typing on phones!

Does it strike anybody strange that this is an iphone app and not an Android thing?

 
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