Mobile technology continues to mature as one of the most commonly used methods of searching for information. As iPhones and Androids become more advanced in design and function, so do the ways in which you can use these devices to search. The development of “voice search” allows users to easily access the information they seek without using miniature keyboards or scrolling through large amounts of information on tiny mobile screens. While voice search is a technological advancement that comes from voice-recognition, it truely does work quite differently.

What is voice search?

The Internet is dependent on the ability to search the seemingly infinite amount of information available online.  As more and more mobile devices are able to access the Internet fully, it’s become increasingly important that they are easily able to search online content. Voice search streams speech digitally through the Internet to a remote database running computationally demanding voice-recognition algorithms that return corresponding text to a user’s search box. In basic terms, voice search uses the Internet to turn your voice into text so you can search the Internet.

All of this is made possible by utilizing cloud technology. Because Voice search takes voice recognition to the cloud instead of a mobile device, it allows for very high performance in both response and accuracy.

While voice-recognition technology has been around for quite some time, the way most consumers have interacted with it has been through programmed customer care. Voice search has taken recent cloud technology, as well as a few well-written algorithms, and turned it into a highly functioning voice recognition tool.

What is the future of voice search?

As voice search is implemented through familiar tools such as Google and in smartphones, we will most likely see even more creative applications develop. It is very likely that device control will soon be integrated with voice search technology.

However, most exciting is what could come of language understanding technology combined with the voice search tool. Common search engines, like Google, match a search query to words in a documented text or written meta content. Language understanding technology takes a more practical approach by searching more abstract fields. For example, a common search for the word “photo editor” would result in files or meta content containing those words. A voice search with language understanding software, however, would load a photo editing software, like Photoshop. Imagine your computer running a program simply because you asked it to.

Voice search is a perfect example of how technology evolves in line with cultural trends. The Internet became mobile with smartphone integration and combined with the advent of cloud computing, opened the door for new search options to be developed. Those developments then have implications in other fields and work to push technology towards new horizons. Soon, highly effective voice search technology could be integrated into the way you use any electronic device.