Google adds voice search to its iPhone app

By Andrew Lim on 18 November 2008, 11:34am

If you're too lazy, too tired or just too annoyed to use the iPhone's text interface to search for something on Google, you'll be pleased to know you can now just say what you're looking for.

No, you haven't woken up in an episode of Star Trek, it's just plain old voice search, similar to Nuance's technology. What's great is that it's very accurate -- most of the time. We tried 'CBS Interactive' and it came up with results for 'CBS Construction'. But while it's not perfect, it's still very useful for simple terms.

All you need to do is download the Google search app or upgrade to the new version and go into settings -- you'll see an option for voice search that you'll want to turn on. Once it's on, a little mic icon appears next to the search app.

Let's say you want to search for the new Star Trek movie -- you simply tap the mic icon, it says 'speak now', you say 'Star Trek movie', and hey presto, the search results appear a few seconds later. You've got to try it to believe it. It's free to download, so make it so.