Google’s push into voice search is no secret: it’s baked into most builds of Android, and Chrome users have been enjoying the search-by-voice feature since July. It wasn’t so much a question of if Google would keep running with it, but where and when would it pop up next.
Google’s Lat Long Blog has that answer for us today, as voice search is now available in Google Maps.
The process is as straightforward as ever: click the microphone icon that now appears in the Google Maps search box and get busy talking. After a bit of testing, accuracy doesn’t appear to be an issue save for a few really dicey names. “Uttar Pradesh” took a few tries, but I can chalk that up to how poorly I tend to enunciate.
While it scores points for verbal accuracy, some Google’s directions are a little flaky. The Lat Long Blog mentions, for example, that you can simply say “directions from Place X to Place Y,” but I couldn’t for the life of me get the place names to pop up in the correctly in the To and From boxes. It took eight tries until I discovered that using the word “directions” in the query like Google suggests really throws everything off.
Tiny oversights like that aside, voice search for Google Maps is generally a blast to use. All you Chrome lovers can feel free to take it for a spin (and report your findings), but everyone else will just have to do it the old-fashioned way.