Google Mobile App (w/ Voice Searching) To Be Released This Monday
By SRASC at 17 November, 2008, 9:44 am
New York Times had reported that the new version of Google’s Mobile App which includes support for voice search will be released on Friday.
However, its Sunday and there is still no sign of the new version. The ever so resourceful and reliable Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has just provided an update based on what they have heard from a source with knowledge of the situation that the new version of Google’s app will likely be available on the App Store on Monday.
Arrington goes on to add:
“Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.”
The positive thing to take away from all this is that Apple seems to be treating Google like any other iPhone Developer even though Google CEO’s Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board.
But it also highlights the pitfalls of Apple’s approval process. It is quite embarrassing for a company of Google’s stature to get press attention only to find out that the application is not getting released.
iPhone Developers big or small should ideally get a 24 to 48 hours notice informing them about the expected release date of their iPhone app so they can plan accordingly.
Arrington believes:
“If the application is half as good as the demo video shows, Google has done something pretty amazing with voice recognition and mobile platforms. This application will, quite simply, sell iPhones. Lots of them.”
We agree that it would be amazing if the application works half as good as the demo video but don’t think it will be a feature that will sell iPhones, it would definitely be one of the features in iPhone’s rich feature list, but we should soon see the app for other mobile platforms so it will not be a differentiating factor for long.
As we have mentioned before, though we are excited to hear about the voice search feature; we are not too sure if it is going to be more convenient than typing out the search query. It will probably depend on the accuracy of the voice recognition technology.
It is definitely promising as iPhone Hacks readers Justin and cabbit who have used GOOG-411 mobile service (which voice search is based on) have found it to be very accurate for them, but it will be interesting to see how it works in the international markets as the GOOG-411 mobile service is available only in the US and Canada.
(via iPhoneHacks.com)
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