Google Granted Patent for Voice-Based Search Interface

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Google Granted Patent for Voice-Based Search Interface

7:30 am on April 14, 2006 | Category: Business, Web Services, Wireless, Law

It appears more and more likely that Google will launch a voice-based mobile search service, with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granting the internet giant a patent on a voice interface for search engines.

Google however, is being quite secretive about the whole business, and won’t go into details about when or if such a service would launch.

“Like many companies, we file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees may come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t. Prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications,” said company spokesman, Barry Schnitt.

But the patent application, originally filed over five years ago claims that “there exists a need for a voice interface that is effective for search engines,” and with most mobile phones still lacking a QWERTY keyboard, that need hasn’t gone away.

“You can expect there will be more mobile search products coming out,” says Opus Research analyst, Dan Miller, explaining that “speech as a mode for doing searches is getting more reliable.” Miller believes that that many internet advertisers are likely salivating at the prospect at gaining access to mobile phones, a potential market of billions.

As with many of Google’s services, however, this one brings forth a number of disturbing privacy concerns. The patent application suggests that the company plans to keep logs of voice searches performed, in order to improve relevancy and speech recognition capabilities.

This means that every search performed could be saved in a database, along with GPS coordinates and a time stamp. Tempting information indeed for the Department of Justice, and other prying eyes within the government, as well as Google itself.

Although such concerns are often perceived as borderline paranoia – and they quite like are are – voice search could add one more threat to user privacy, which is being increasingly threatened in this highly technological age.