There was a session at I/O called "More Awesome Web" which seemed to imply that a web audio API (which enables live microphone input) and a web speech API (whic

There was a session at I/O called "More Awesome Web" which seemed to imply that a web audio API (which enables live microphone input) and a web speech API (which enables voice-recognition driven apps) are both currently only supported in Chrome. Here is a slide from that presentation: http://www.moreawesomeweb.com/#32 http://www.moreawesomeweb.com/#32 (just use the right arrow to progress through the slides). If that's what's holding up speech recognition for other browsers then hopefully these APIs can become more widely supported, but at the same time I don't think the demand for browser speech recognition is there yet. It makes sense on your phone, but bending over your desktop or laptop in order to talk to your computer somehow doesn't seem right yet.