Google has enhanced voice-based search capabilities to understand Indian accent. The Internet giant unveiled the new experience at an event showcasing English voice search in Indian dialect, including for the Knowledge Graph and Google Now services.
“From asking Google where you can watch the latest movie to finding out cricket scores at the touch of a button, Google is there to help you get the answers you need,” Sandeep Menon, Head of Marketing, Google India, said.
While voice-based search was available, the problem was that the search engine had trouble recognising Indian accent. Working with over 700 volunteers in India, the company collected spoken utterances to create specific language models that power English voice search in the Indian accent.
“The next time you want to ask Google something, simply tap on the microphone and speak your query. Voice search is available on Android 2.3+ and up, iOS devices, via the Google Search App and to desktop computers via the Chrome browser,” it said.
Next big thing While writing an e-mail using the Google keyboard, users can tap on the microphone and dictate messages, including “new paragraph” and “commas” for punctuation.
Voice-based search is the next big thing with a number of players, including Apple, moving in the direction
While Google has become synonymous with searching for information on the World Wide Web, the idea of search itself has gone through massive changes over the last decade. When it first started some searches could take up to 20 seconds and today it would be shocking if it took more than a second. Not only has search become faster it has also become predictive and more accurate.
Ben Gomes, Engineering lead for Google Search, had earlier told Business Line that how voice search would get more relevant in the mobile context. “The mobile device is with you everywhere but it is not easy to type in a question. In order to make it easier, we need to enable speech because you could be driving your car and cannot see your device screen,” Gomes said.