November 17, 2008 by Matt Thomas
Google Mobile App, the iPhone application that lets users speak search questions directly into Google was not available from the application store on Friday. It seems even the search engine giant has to move at Apples pace when it comes to the iPhone. The delay was caused by Apple technicians testing the application to see if they wanted to approve it, despite a lot of marketing and publicity surrounding the launch.
The application, which should be available at some point today, works by allowing you to speak a search enquiry into your handset. Google will then search for a set of results in the usual way. The program uses the motion of moving the phone to your ear to tell when you are ready to search and takes location into account, so that when you ask for taxis or film showing times you receive local results.
The technology for this kind of voice recognition programme has been around for a while and obviously you still have to read the search results, so the wow-factor is limited and the time saving is not huge. Nevertheless Google seem to have implemented it well enough to ensure that it will be downloaded heavily when it eventually becomes available.
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