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Searching the web for information has become increasingly important over the last years. In 2015, Google handled at least 2 trillion searches, which equals more than 60 thousand searches every second (Sullivan, 2016). Generally, when we think of searches, we tend to think of textual searches: we search for the name of the president of the United States by typing ‘President United States’ into Google. However, in recent years, a different way of searching has arised: voice search. Voice search comprises actions on a device for which you use your voice to do actions like search, get directions, and create reminders (Google, 2017). At this very moment, 40% of the adults use voice search on a daily basis (Jeffs, 2017). Virtual assistants on your mobile device such as Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant are becoming increasingly smarter and use machine learning technologies in order to increase their performance (Levy, 2014). Furthermore, physical voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and Apple’s HomePod, become more important as well. In the beginning of this year, already more than 11 million Echos were sold, and it is predicted that 24.5 million home devices will be sold in 2017 (González, 2017; Charara, 2017).

So, what can we use it for? As for now, I will only focus on the types of voice search that involve the use of internet. Currently, voice search is primarily being used to gather information, for instance to find out what the weather in Rotterdam is going to do in the upcoming weekend, what the capital is of Madagascar, or how how many grams there are in a pound. Recently, however, we have seen a change in this course, and different, more directive possibilities have been enrolled. A good example of this is the use of voice search for shopping purposes. At the end of this August, Walmart and Google announced that they partnered up to enable voice shopping with Google Assistant. Regular Walmart shoppers will now be able to easily reorder products based their past behaviour in the Walmart stores and at Walmart.com when they need it. Using this does not feel like a traditional order any longer, where you went online or to the store to put a product in your (digital) basket and paid the price it asked. In the case of Walmart and Google it works more intuitively. In case you run out of peanut butter, you just have to say “OK Google, order peanut butter”, and it will order it for you and deliver it to your house (Perez, 2017). Not only Walmart and Google are involved in this. In June this year, Amazon Echo and travel website Kayak teamed up in order to enable customers to book hotels by using voice search (O’Neill, 2017). It is highly likely that more partnerships will arise over the next years.

These and other developments decrease the need to interact with a screen in order to get an action done. It is predicted that half of all searches in 2020 will be voice searches, and 20% of all searches will then be conducted without involving a screen at all (Olson, 2016; Forni, 2016). Although this development clearly is very interesting and fascinating and can create value for consumers, companies in this industry are in some ways still searching for ways in order to capture this value. Google’s experiment with introducing spoken advertisements on their physical assistant ‘Home’ were not received very well, and the quest for capturing the value continues (Wehner, 2017). Thus, this definitely is not going to be the last thing said about voice search, and we will see (or hear) what the future entails.

References:
Charara, S. (2017). Voice powered devices will have a big 2017: 24.5 million sales predicted. Wareable. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from https://www.wareable.com/smart-home/voice-powered-devices-will-have-a-big-2017-245-million-sales-predicted-3828

Forni, A. (2016). Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2017 and Beyond. Gartner. Retrieved 8 October 2017, from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3482117

González, Á. (2017). Amazon has sold more than 11 million Echo devices, Morgan Stanley says. The Seattle Times. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-has-sold-more-than-11-million-echo-devices-morgan-stanley-says/

Jeffs, M. (2017). OK Google, Siri, Alexa, Cortana; Can you tell me some stats on voice search?. Branded3. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from https://www.branded3.com/blog/google-voice-search-stats-growth-trends/

Levy, S. (2014). The iBrain is Here – And It’s Already Inside Your Phone. WIRED. Retrieved 8 October 2017, from https://www.wired.com/2016/08/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and-machine-learning-work-at-apple/

Olson, C. (2016). Just say it: The future of search is voice and personal digital assistants. Campaign. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/just-say-it-future-search-voice-personal-digital-assistants/1392459

O’Neill, S. (2017). Kayak and Amazon Echo Now Offer Voice-Powered Hotel Booking. Skift. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from https://skift.com/2017/07/11/kayak-and-amazon-alexa-now-offer-voice-powered-hotel-booking/

Perez, S. (2017). Walmart and Google partner on voice-based shopping. TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/walmart-and-google-partner-on-voice-based-shopping/

Sullivan, D. (2016). Google now handles at least 2 trillion searches per year. Search Engine Land. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from https://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillion-searches-per-year-250247

Use “OK Google” voice searches & actions. (2017). Google. Retrieved 8 October 2017, from https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2940021?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

Wehner, M. (2017). Google removes audio ads from Google Home hours after introducing them. BGR. Retrieved 7 October 2017, from http://bgr.com/2017/03/17/google-home-audio-ads-beauty-and-the-beast/