Yahoo Voice Search
:for mobile phones
Yahoo Voice Search
Yahoo Inc on last Wednesday revealed new features to make Web searching a lot easier and more targeted to mobile phone users.
Yahoo mobile chief Marco Boerries told the press that his company aims to make millions of Web links more accessible on phones, by tapping deeper into the sites and by enabling consumers to use voice commands to search the Web.
“This is really a sea change. This is not about simple Web links any more,” Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life unit, said in an interview ahead of a keynote speech at CTIA, the annual U.S. wireless showcase.
Yahoo presented the latest version of its oneSearch service as it forges ahead with its mobile Internet strategy in the face of an unsolicited Microsoft Corp takeover bid.
Yahoo is now trying to open up the way it finds search results for mobile phone users by allowing publishers to provide highly categorized information that gives them more control over what content users see and how it is been shown on their tiny mobile phone screen.
Yahoo also will let oneSearch consumers use voice commands for search services that go beyond existing mobile voice recognition systems or 411-based services that are structured into simple categories, such as “local listings.” Conventional speech recognition services limit potential search topics to certain items using very basic vocabulary. OneSearch allows “wide open” searches for flight listings, locations, Web site names, restaurants, news or game times.
Yahoo voice search allows its users to switch between ‘text search’ and ‘voice search’ at any time, and it also offers alternative suggestions for similar sounding words. Voice searches can take as little as five seconds: first one to two seconds to recognize the search keyword and two to three seconds to return search results to the phone. Slower networks may take 10 to 20 seconds to return most search results.
Starting on Wednesday, Blackberry users can download voice-enabled oneSearch at m.yahoo.com/voice/. By the end of 2008, Yahoo plans to introduce the service on 500 different devices and in international markets.
“We’ve got exclusive rights in a company that we believe will change voice search forever,” Boerries told Reuters.
