Voice search came to Russia!

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Boris Khvostichenko, Google Product Manager in Russia

Let's do a little experiment. Which is faster: say “synchrophasotron” or type this word on the telephone keypad?

Modern phones offer us many different ways to interact with them. But I think you will agree that the voice was and remains the most natural of them: we usually speak much faster than we type, especially if we are in motion.

Do you agree? Then we have great news for you - now you can search Google with your voice - in the great and powerful Russian language, wherever you are. Google Voice Search will help you with this.





To start Voice Search for each language (now Voice Search is available in English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and more recently in Polish and Czech), we collect voice fragments week after week, which allow us to create speech models that ensure the correct operation of the service. We ask native speakers who differ in accents, age and individual characteristics to pronounce frequently used phrases in a variety of acoustic conditions, for example, in a restaurant, on the street or in a car. For each language, we also create a dictionary containing more than a million recognizable words. This is a huge but very interesting job. And we are glad that now you can appreciate its quality in relation to the Russian language.

How to do it?

It all depends on the model of your phone.
  • If you use a device based on Android OS version 2.1 and higher, and you have a quick search bar, then you just need to click on the microphone icon and voice search will start automatically. If you do not have the application installed, you can download it for free from the Android Market online store (the keywords are “voice search” in the Russian language of the interface or “voice search” in English).
  • Users of iPhone phones need to install the Google Mobile App and make sure that the Russian language is selected in the settings of your phone. The application can be found either by typing "Google Mobile App" in the online store App Store, or on the iTunes website at this link .
  • For some Nokia users with the S60v3 operating system, it’s enough to go to m.google.com/search from their mobile browser and download the Google Mobile App.
For more information, visit www.google.com/golos.

Try and share your impressions!

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