14 DAY TRIAL // Google is constantly tweaking its products and its search engine is no different. What's more, the company always runs several experiments in the wild, to test different ideas, layouts and new features.
Many small changes are introduced without much fanfare, even though they may make a big difference for some users. Equally, Google doesn't comment on public tests, except to say that it has a policy of testing additions with live users.
One interesting experiment that some users have spotted is a voice input-enabled Google search. Google recently launched Chrome 11 with support for the HTML5 speech input API.
The company also showcased the functionality by adding support for the feature in Google Translate, so expanding that to Google Search isn't much of a surprise.
That said, Google Search is orders of magnitude bigger than Google Translate so the company's caution is understandable.
Users that are part of the experiment report seeing the same mic icon that's used in Google Translate inside the search box. Google uses the same location to place a link to custom keyboard layouts for localized versions of the search engine for languages that have non-standard Latin scripts or use other scripts entirely.
That seems to be the preferred place for alternative input features, so the speech input button seems legitimate enough.
Once the button goes live for everyone, users will be able to click on it, providing that they have a mic connected to their computer, and will be able to speak their query.
This will only work in Google Chrome, it's the only browser supporting the API at the moment, and it only works for English. But other browsers will eventually adopt it and Google promised to expand support to other languages soon.
That said, speech input isn't a big feature for desktops, it's nice to have but most people will still prefer the keyboard. On mobile devices, lacking a physical keyboard, that's a different story. Since Google wants Chrome and Chrome OS on tablets, it's easy to see why speech input is so important.