After much speculation, Google launched its mobile “talk search” using speech recognition over cell phones. Just speak your question and get an answer back in a few seconds on your phone.
“It’s important to understand that machine recognition will never be perfect,” Mr. Reddy added. “The question is, How close can they come to human performance?” For Google the technology is critical to its next assault on the world of advertising. Google executives said location-based queries would make it possible to charge higher rates for advertisements from nearby businesses, for example, although it is not selling such ads now.
ChaCha, just down the road from me in Carmel, Indiana, has been at this mobile search game for a while now and says it’s tied with Yahoo! for No. 2. My wife and kids are big users of the ChaCha service while driving in the car.
