Look, Ma, I’m Googling with no hands in Chrome’s latest beta

Now you can start Googling in Chrome just by saying, “OK, Google” — without touching your computer at all.

The latest version of Chrome Beta, the test version of Google’s popular browser, now lets you do hands-free searching with your voice by clicking a single button one time, according to aGoogle Chrome blog post today. Once you’ve enabled that, you can start a Google search without clicking or typing at all.

I couldn’t get it to work after downloading it on my Mac just now. But over the next few days, the feature will be provided to people using Chrome in English in the United States on devices running Windows, Mac, and Linux, according to the blog post.

Google first demonstrated voice search in Chrome at Google I/O last year, and it’s been available to some users — but until now, you had to first click on a little microphone in the search bar on Google’s search site before speaking. Now, you just say “OK, Google.”

The feature could be fun for all — and it could help people with disabilities get more out of the Internet.

And by getting more users to adopt voice search, the accuracy of the system could improve. That’s useful in helping Google challenge Apple’s Siri and other companies working on voice recognition.

Jordan Novet

http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/27/look-ma-im-googling-with-no-hands-in-chromes-latest-beta/