Last month Google rolled out a new beta version of the Google Chrome web browser with support for speech input through HTML5, allowing you to use your voice to interact with web pages supporting the new standard. Now Google has moved the feature from the beta channel to the stable channel, which means if you’re using the latest stable build of Google Chrome, your browser now supports speech input. And since Chrome is set to auto-update, that means if you loaded the browser today, you probably have the new feature.

So why would you want speech input for a web site? In a word: translation. In a few more words, real-time voice translation from one language to another. Google has added speech input to the web version of Google Translate, which means you can speak in English, (or French, or Spanish, or another language) into your computer’s microphone, press a button, and convert your words into another language. Hello universal translator.

That feature has been available for Android and iOS for a little while, but it’s pretty awesome to be able to use it in any web browser.

I can also imagine speech input coming in handy for web sites that provide maps, navigation, music jukebox, or VoIP functionality.

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2 replies on “Google Chrome web browser now supports speech input using HTML5”

  1. What a gimmick. The Windows OS already has built-in speech input, and if you turn it on, you can speech-input into any box, on any webpage, using any browser.

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