Google launched a new application for Apple's iPhone that uses voice recognition technology to enter queries in the company's search engine. The free app should be available now from the iPhone's App Store and through iTunes.
The free application, will allow users to ask very simple questions and get a more than satisfactory answer. You can ask things like “where is the closest McDonald’s”, or “what is the square root of 1,000″ and the app will upload the recorded speech to Google servers and retrieve an answer for you. These search results can be retrieved in a matter of seconds on a WiFi network and often times will utilize the Locate Me feature of the iPhone to better tailor your results. Google's voice activated search app also uses iPhone features that let it determine your location.
This works for both Web searches and contacts, which makes the application double as a voice-powered contact search. You cannot, however, dial a result without clicking on it.
However, the Google researchers behind this application say that the voice recognition technology is only in its early days, and that users could get gibberish results at times. But the researchers hope that in the coming year this technology with evolve more rapidly, improving the quality of the results users get.