Leave it to Google to offer something for free that everyone else is trying to figure out a way to monetize. The New York Times reported today that Google is working on an application for the Apple iPhone that allows a voice-activated search. This means that while driving around looking for a place to eat you could simply say, "What's the best pizza in Manhattan" to your iPhone and it would display on Google Maps the locations of the top places in the city to get a pie.
This comes at a time when several major players are moving into the mobile search market. As an add-on to its BMW Assist system, BMW recently introduced a Google Search function that's part of a Convenience Plan package that costs $199 a year, and in October, Best Buy debuted a pair of portable navigation systems priced at $400 and $500 with one year of free wireless service, after which it costs $99 a year. Just this Monday, TeleNav unveiled its new Shotgun portable nav that costs $299 and carries a monthly service fee of $12 (or $129 a year) and allows for wirelessly sending location-based info from a website to the device.
But according to the Times article, Google's voice-activated iPhone search app could appear on Apple's iTunes App Store as early as today, and for absolutely free,
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If that's not interesting enough, Google's coming out with a phone that's a direct competitor to the iphone.
Already on Google Maps Mobile for Blackberry.
This is why I love Google. They're the new Yahoo. They're the one company that keeps customers and shareholders happy. (pay no attention to the past 3 months!)
The G1 phone is cool, but it doesn't have Enterprise e-mail so I've kept away for now. They need to fix that.
I think Sprint's Samsung Instinct is voice activated. My brother just got one this past weekend. He had not played with it enough yet to tell me how well the GPS worked, but I know the capability is there.