Well I have to say that I was excited to try out Google's new voice searching tool on the iPhone.  I downloaded to iTunes and synced the phone and saw the google app sitting on my phone's screen.  So far so good.  

After opening up the app it greets you with a google search text box at the top and three tabs at the bottom, Search (main page), Apps and Settings.  I didn't see a way to do voice search so went directly into the setting to see if something needed to be set up.  Sure enough there was a voice search on/off switch.  Once that was set, I noticed another setting for search filter, it defaulted to "moderate".  I wondered why anyone would want their search filtered for a brief moment and then promptly set it to off / unfiltered.  Maybe for kids?

Now that voice search was switched on, back to the search tab.  A new icon in the top right appears saying that voice search is available and there is a button to see a help video of some kind.  No need for manuals or videos, I wanted to get straight into it.  I put the phone to my ear and the phone's sensor recognized and had a soft double beeping sound, quite pleasant and functional, this beep sounds like "ok ready to start".  So I started testing, "Thailand"... the phone said "working" and I waited for about 10-15 seconds only to be greeted with "we didn't catch that" and a choice between cancel and "speak again".  I tried again.  Another 15 seconds and the same result.

I then tried:

Apple.  The first two times didn't work and the third try worked and a search results page came up.  45 seconds or so later (after the unsuccessful tries), not great but It worked!  Lets try again.

San Francisco.  First try!  Some search results appeared and then a google map of San Francisco started to appear.

New York hotel.  nothing
Hotels in New York.  nothing

Paper supplier.  bingo first try.

Opensocial.  again first try!  sweet. 

London hotels.  wow on a roll here

Chigago.  Nope no dice again. 

Hmm.  by this point the fun and games were over and my excitement had fully deflated.  Lets see how the text search works.

I thought that by searching in the app that the search results would be fast and in-app.  Nope, for every search that is made it kicks you out of the google application and launches safari and tries to go to the regular search results page on google (mobile version).  Well, over edge this took ages to even start to load and I was fed up, had enough. 

The fun and games are over for this iPhone user.  Sorry google but I have to say, it is a brilliant idea but not ready for prime time.   Suggestions to improve:

- make voice recognition more reliable.  I understand if it doesn't catch something once and a while but all the time is annoying and frustrating.  It is easier to type into the google bar in safari. 
- don't kick me out to safari to get search results.  The voice search is in-app, why not text search results in-app?
- one way that you could make the voice search more accurate is to ask for each search (or every fifth or so search) if the app recognized the right words that you spoke.  It could use the data to "teach" the system and it would get more and more accurate over time. 

For those interested, the google voice search app is available for free in the iTunes store HERE .

For me, I will wait six months or wait until I hear that it has improved considerable.  I am sure google will make an amazing product out of this eventually.  Hats off to google for their innovation.

A really cool iPhone app is coming out soon. Voice search. Tired of typing searches into your tiny phone keyboard? Soon we will be able to just say what we are looking for and google will come back with results. Probably won't be perfect on day 1 but this is a huge leap forward in technology that is available to us on a daily basis. Even if it takes one more year to get it tuned and working well, who cares. We are willing to wait!

Here are some excerpts from an article in the New York Times:

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearestStarbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

...

The service can be used to get restaurant recommendations and driving directions, look up contacts in the iPhone’s address book or just settle arguments in bars. The query “What is the best pizza restaurant in Noe Valley?” returns a list of three restaurants in that San Francisco neighborhood, each with starred reviews from Google users and links to click for phone numbers and directions.

...

As with other Google products the service is freely available to consumers, and the company plans to eventually make it available for phones other than the iPhone.

...

An intriguing part of the overall design of the service was contributed by a Google researcher in London, who found a way to use the iPhone accelerometer — the device that senses how the phone is held — to set the software to “listen” mode when the phone is raised to the user’s ear.

Google researchers said that another of its advantages over competitors was the billions of queries its users have made over the years.

The full article can be seen here on the New York Times website .