5 ms·

Voice search enabled on Google homepage (Chrome)

59 points by res0nat0r 15y ago

mshafrir 15y ago
Seems like this is using the HTML5 speech input API. http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-to-your-computer-with-html5.html http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-to-your-computer-...
revorad 15y ago
Combined with the best search engine in the world, this is nothing short of magical. We are living in the future.
alphadog 15y ago
Interestingly enough, I notice it on http://www.wunderground.com/ http://www.wunderground.com/ homepage using Chrome. Not exactly sure how they're using it?
- superchink 15y ago
  I managed to dig up this blog post (http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api-chrome-11/ http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api-chr...) that seems to explain how to use it for your own purposes.
- ch0wn 15y ago
  All you need to do is add the x-webkit-speech attribute to the desired input element: <input name=query x-webkit-speech>
  - mildweed 15y ago
    http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-api-draft.html http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-a... I, for one, can't wait till Android and iOS implement this.
jmjerlecki 15y ago
Now all we need is google instant with voice capabilities. I would like for it to predict what I am going to say.
elithrar 15y ago
"Please note Voice Search is available for US English only." Damn, and there I was going to search for Crocodile Dundee quotes.
- zantzinger 15y ago
  I can't go to google.com without being automatically redirected to google.co.uk. (I'm in the UK).
  - elithrar 15y ago
    > I can't go to google.com without being automatically redirected to google.co.uk. (I'm in the UK). If you replace the 'co.uk' with '.com' after you've done a search, then it should stick.
  - revorad 15y ago
    There's a link at the bottom which says Go to google.com.
    - zantzinger 15y ago
      Thanks - link at the bottom (I'm blind!).
  - cultureulterior 15y ago
    I can't believe people don't know about google.com/ncr, which disables country redirect
greendestiny 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
- medwezys 15y ago
  My first test was "Look at my horse my horse is amazing" and it worked just fine even though I am not a native english speaker.
- cantbecool 15y ago
  I said, 'I cant be cool,' but it came out 'I cant b cool'. Extremely close in my opinion, and Prince would be proud. For more generic words the results came out perfect: 'wired', 'baseball', 'hacker news', and 'Philadelphia Phillies'.
zackattack 15y ago
Gonna be great for searching lyrics
antimora 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Theoretically they use said data to make the speech search better.
grimen 15y ago
Too bad it' hardly working though. =( 7/10 was totally failing.
mbenjaminsmith 15y ago
Didn't work for any query. Crashed my browser once (Chrome 14.0.794.0 dev / OS X 10.6.7).
- xorglorb 15y ago
  Works just fine on 14.0.797.0.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
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.
zkirill 15y ago
This is a big step – millions of people becoming more comfortable with searching for information just by speaking to their computer. Historical moment.
- cantbecool 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Yes, technology was around for years but it was just made more accessible to a much larger demographic.
dereg 15y ago
Does anybody know a keyboard shortcut to activate the voice search without having to click on the microphone?
- discipline 15y ago
  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.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
snar 15y ago
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.
- stuartmemo 15y ago
  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?
  - nikron 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      Didn't you have to click the mic icon before it started recording anything?
      - fgm2r 15y ago
        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?
        MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        It calls a browser function, not a javascript function.
- sixcorners 15y ago
  I don't think it allows any arbitrary website to record your sounds. Your browser is in charge of turning your sounds into text right?
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
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 ...
nishantmodak 15y ago
When I see this - I really appreciate how good 'Watson' is with speech to text!
- kgermino 15y ago
  Watson had no speech to text, the questions were fed to it as text. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Operation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Operation
BasDirks 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
encoderer 15y ago
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.
fbnt 15y ago
For those of you who gets redirected to the localized version of google without the new feature, go to http://www.google.com/en http://www.google.com/en
zrog 15y ago
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!

59 points by res0nat0r 15y ago

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

revorad 15y ago

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

alphadog 15y ago

Interestingly enough, I notice it on http://www.wunderground.com/ http://www.wunderground.com/ homepage using Chrome. Not exactly sure how they're using it?

superchink 15y ago
I managed to dig up this blog post (http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api-chrome-11/ http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api-chr...) that seems to explain how to use it for your own purposes.
ch0wn 15y ago
All you need to do is add the x-webkit-speech attribute to the desired input element: <input name=query x-webkit-speech>
- mildweed 15y ago
  http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-api-draft.html http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/2010/10/google-a... I, for one, can't wait till Android and iOS implement this.

jmjerlecki 15y ago

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

elithrar 15y ago

"Please note Voice Search is available for US English only." Damn, and there I was going to search for Crocodile Dundee quotes.

zantzinger 15y ago
I can't go to google.com without being automatically redirected to google.co.uk. (I'm in the UK).
- elithrar 15y ago
  > I can't go to google.com without being automatically redirected to google.co.uk. (I'm in the UK). If you replace the 'co.uk' with '.com' after you've done a search, then it should stick.
- revorad 15y ago
  There's a link at the bottom which says Go to google.com.
  - zantzinger 15y ago
    Thanks - link at the bottom (I'm blind!).
- cultureulterior 15y ago
  I can't believe people don't know about google.com/ncr, which disables country redirect

greendestiny 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
medwezys 15y ago
My first test was "Look at my horse my horse is amazing" and it worked just fine even though I am not a native english speaker.
cantbecool 15y ago
I said, 'I cant be cool,' but it came out 'I cant b cool'. Extremely close in my opinion, and Prince would be proud. For more generic words the results came out perfect: 'wired', 'baseball', 'hacker news', and 'Philadelphia Phillies'.

zackattack 15y ago

Gonna be great for searching lyrics

antimora 15y ago

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 15y ago
Theoretically they use said data to make the speech search better.

grimen 15y ago

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

mbenjaminsmith 15y ago

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

xorglorb 15y ago
Works just fine on 14.0.797.0.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

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.

zkirill 15y ago

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

cantbecool 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Yes, technology was around for years but it was just made more accessible to a much larger demographic.

dereg 15y ago

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

discipline 15y ago
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.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

snar 15y ago

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.

stuartmemo 15y ago
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?
- nikron 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Didn't you have to click the mic icon before it started recording anything?
    - fgm2r 15y ago
      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?
      - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
        It calls a browser function, not a javascript function.
sixcorners 15y ago
I don't think it allows any arbitrary website to record your sounds. Your browser is in charge of turning your sounds into text right?

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

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 ...

nishantmodak 15y ago

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

kgermino 15y ago
Watson had no speech to text, the questions were fed to it as text. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Operation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Operation

BasDirks 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

encoderer 15y ago

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.

fbnt 15y ago

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

zrog 15y ago

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!