Brin Keeps on Inventing: Voice Interface for a Search Engine
May 2, 2008
On April 11, 2008, the USPTO issued US 7,366,668 B1, “Voice Interface for a Search Engine”. The patent is a continuation of US 7,027,987, filed in 2001 and granted in 2006. Among the inventors are Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders.
There are some differences between the two patent documents. First, Figure 5 has been modified to explicitly identify inputs and interactions for:
- A language model
- A phonetic dictionary
- Acoustic model
- Query constraint parameters
- Query term weights.
The number of claims has been increased, and there are wording changes that, based on my reading of the documents, do some word smithing like adding “Boolean” methods to claim seven and some major surgery such as expanding claim 12 to detail the voice system. You can download a copy of the “old” and “new” version of this invention from the USPTO. Tip: use this system in off-peak hours. Like many US government Web sites, the infrastructure is often unable to cope with traffic.
Three observations are warranted:
First, I recall AT&T’s and Verizon’s telling me that their analysts had a good sense of what Google was doing in the telecommunications market. I also recall that Google’s thrust and feint strategy generated some angst during the recent spectrum auction. As I recall, Verizon has indicated that it would “open” its system to some degree. Since this voice search invention dates from 2001, it’s reasonable to assume that management at AT&T, Verizon, and other telecommunications companies have been monitoring Google’s telco inventions over the last seven years.
Second, search on mobile devices is different from search on notebook computers or mobile devices with larger key boards. The obvious way to make search work on a mobile device is to allow a person to talk to the device. Google’s been grinding away at this problem for a number of years, and it is possible that Google will move more aggressively on this front. An “update” is nothing new in software; an update in a core technical invention like voice search is somewhat more significant.
Finally, the changes to the system and method for voice search seem to make more explicit Google’s willingness to expose some of its computational intelligence techniques. Since 2005, the company’s inventions have included algorithms that work up and down to arrive at a “good enough” value. Other inventions have disclosed an inside-outside method such as the one disclosed in US 7,366,668 B1. If you are a fan of smart software, this voice-search invention is worth some of your time.
My research for Google Version 2.0 documented that when Google fiddles with an invention, the company is not performing random, pointless legal work. Google, despite the purple bean bags and lava lamps, is far from casual in its approach to engineering. I almost deleted this post because US telecommunication companies are better than James Fenimore Cooper’s matchless tracker Chingagook when it comes to things that are Googley.
Stephen Arnold, May 3, 2008
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