Anyone is eyeing the mobile web space these days and Google is no exception. In fact, the search giant is pushing hard on all fronts, from its dedicated search services for mobile to creating its own mobile OS, Android. After making a big splash last week with a dedicated turn-by-turn GPS app for Android, it's now focusing its attention to the core search business and launching Google Search by voice in Mandarin, the most popular Chinese dialect, and a version of the app for Nokia S60 devices.

“Google Search by voice has grown up quickly. Some might say that search by voice has matured from a toddler to a tween. It's certainly been traveling across the English-speaking world and getting better at understanding a range of accents, from the US, U.K., India and Australia,” Elke Michlmayr, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

“Up until now voice search has only been available in English, but the new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 devices works for Mandarin speakers, too. We're really proud of the work we've done with Mandarin speech recognition, both because it's the most spoken language in the world, and because of the engineering challenge.”

Google Search by voice does exactly what you'd expect: it allows you to do a Google search without having to type anything by using speech recognition technology. This technology is right at home on mobile phones where having to type anything can be frustrating. Anything that can be done to decrease the amount of typing necessary is a very welcomed addition.

The problem was the feature only being available in English leaving out a significant percentage of the world's online population. Now, Google is launching a Mandarin version as well seeing as how it is actually the most spoken language in the world. But given the complex nature of the tongue, Google had a lot of work on its hands and warns that this is still the first release to support it so it may not be as polished as the English version. It's also only available for Nokia devices for now but the company says it will introduce it to the iPhone and Android devices as well.