Conversational Voice Search for Desktop

Amit Singhal announced at Google I/O that this is "the end of search as we know it". The future of search goes beyond search results and it has more to do with answering questions, conversations and anticipating user's intentions.

Google has 3 products with similar goals: Knowledge Graph, Voice Search and Google Now. They go hand in hand to deliver the future of search today.

Voice Search has been available on the desktop if you're using Chrome, but now it's much better: it has been upgraded to the conversational voice search released last year for Android and iOS. Just click the microphone icon from the Google search box, ask questions and you'll get a spoken answer. Soon you'll be to just say "OK Google" to trigger voice search.

Google Search for Android added some new Google Now cards: reminders, last train home (Japan only), real time public transit updates and recommendations for books, games and music albums. Google Now can understand things like "remind me to call Susan tomorrow at 10", "when I go to Rome, remind me to buy a new suit" or "remind me to meet Dan when I get to work". You can create both time-based reminders and location-based reminders.

Voice Search is getting more sophisticated, the Knowledge Graph has more facts and connections between concepts, while Google Now gets smarter and tries to anticipate your searches.

{ via Inside Search blog }