Not a great surprise, voice search has been available on iPhones for 2-3 years at least, and on Android phones for around a year.  Microsoft have been ramping up their voice services with the launch of Kinect, announcing more voice control services including voice driven Bing search.

Having been a long time Android user and a frequent Kinect gamer, I can honestly say these voice services have never added anything to either of the experiences they are offered with.

In 18 months of owning an Android phone I think I’ve used the voice search twice.  It doesn’t offer anything I can’t do with a keyboard, and faster if the voice recognition gets my speech wrong (usually the case).  In public it generally makes you look quite odd, and in office environments just isn’t practical.

For Kinect, it’s quicker and easier to use a control pad to navigate my xbox.  They’ll usually be other people present or music on, and talking isn’t a very useful or efficient way to interact with the machine.  I do things faster, more reliably, and easier with a control pad.

What does voice command really add to the experience? It certainly adds a ‘cool’ factor (lasting for about 4 minutes), but after that it generally becomes a pain.  I don’t see it having a future across many servies, including this Google announcement.

Until voice recognition becomes perfect, I don’t see a place for it in modern life.  Until it can perfectly interpret all my natural speech, allowing me to write a blog post such as this in the time it takes to speak the words, then I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere

When that day comes, the way we interact with computer devices will change forever.  Productivity across workplaces will be revolutionised and the world will be quite a different place.

I found it a little odd that a search engine is ranking a position 4 page for a term that doesn’t appear anywhere within the site whatsoever – a more intelligent search engine indexing process? The revolution of how search engines rank for content? A clear example of the differences between a traditional search engine and the new ‘decision engine’ model.

Results page in question.

It also appears that I can act as a popular wood burning stove – always nice to know