Google declares that voice search is “core” to it’s business, and demos mobile version of Gmail

Vic Gundotra, Google VP of Engineering, declared that voice search will be central to Google’s business, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on Friday. He claimed that Google’s voice recognition software has improved hugely recently, and could soon be a core part of its mobile and on-line services.

Responding to the claims that the early versions of Google voice search we practically useless outside of North America, Vic said that the accuracy of the service has improved 15% since the launch of the iPhone App. He said “It’s one of those technologies we think gets better with usage. We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better.”

He admitted that the service, when originally launched back in 2002, was not very useful. But the mobile applications that Google have recently released for iPod, Blackberry and Android have seen the service improve hugely.

Mobile Gmail

Vic Gundotra also showed off a web application that Google has been working on, that will allow all mobile handsets to access Gmail smoothly on the mobile web. The service was a technical prototype, based on an upcoming version of HTML that hasn’t yet been widely adopted. The prototype was operational on iPhone and G1, and Google have asked us to “stay tuned” for a release date.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7982763.stm

What we think?

While Google is claiming that it’s Voice Search service will be operational on-line as well as on mobile, I think we all know that the true application of this service is on handsets. The potential of a true mobile voice search service is hard to over-hype, but so far nobody has been able to get it right. Google weren’t forthcoming with any real figures during this speech, so we’ll have to wait for more detailed metrics. But just how much are Google dedicating to mobile right now? Google Voice Search will work on any handset, and it’s working to get Gmail on every handset as well. With Google Voice just around the corner, you have to wonder just how much of Google’s resources are dedicated to breaking into mobile right now. With the set of features it’s got coming this year, it looks like Google are stepping up to Yahoo! Mobile to provide the most comprehensive user-experience on mobile.