I’ve been testing it out the past few minutes. While finding tricky words like “parislemon” (the name of my personal blog) doesn’t exactly work (it looked for Paris, London — understandable), using a phrase like “where is sushi?” works beautifully. After a few seconds of processing, it returns results showing local sushi restaurants. Using the same interface as Google’s new iPhone-optimized search results pages, you can easily call the restaurants or get directions to them.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":100536,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"mobile,social,","session":"D"}']The function works for regular Google search results as well, not just local restaurants and the like. For example, say “Egypt” and you’ll get results for Egypt. I even tried “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” It worked.
This update also gives you one-touch access to all of Google popular apps like Gmail, Calendar, Readers and others. While clicking these buttons simply opens the web browser (not sure why Google didn’t put the web browser in the app itself like other apps do), it’s nice to have these all listed out.
AI Weekly
The must-read newsletter for AI and Big Data industry written by Khari Johnson, Kyle Wiggers, and Seth Colaner.
Included with VentureBeat Insider and VentureBeat VIP memberships.
Update: And there’s also a hidden menu.
Google Voice Search iPhone app from MG Siegler on Vimeo.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More