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Voice-based search is all the rage these days. Google has now updated its official Search app for iOS with what the company is calling ‘smarter conversations.’ It means that you can use voice for search queries, and then also ask relevant, follow-up questions.

Voice-based assistance and search engines, both are growing increasingly intelligent and sophisticated. Google’s Search app is somewhat of a combination of both. In the new version of the app, dubbed version 4.0.0, you can use voice-based queries to search stuff online.

To begin voice-activated search, you can either tap the mic icon on the screen or simply say ‘Ok Google‘ after opening the app. The new version comes with some very cool features. For instance, if you ask the app ‘When is the 2014 football world cup?’, it will tell you the dates. Then if you ask ‘What is the first match?’, the app will be able to come up with the schedule, understanding on its own what match you are talking about.

So your second query becomes understandable for the app in context of your first query. In other words, the app has grown smarter and is able to respond to queries based on their real-time context. This can be an immensely useful feature for iOS users. But whether or not it will be enough to trump Siri’s dominance over iOS devices, remains to be seen.

At one side, there’s Siri coupled with Microsoft’s Bing. While Siri is the gold standard of voice-based assistants, Bing comes in lower than Google on the list. On the other hand, there is Google with its search engine and a budding voice-based assistant that is yet to catch up with Siri. So the race is pretty close and Google may be able to get even in the coming days.

You can download the updated version of Google Search for iOS here.

Source: iTunes

Courtesy: Apple Insider

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