engine - 8:40 am on Apr 13, 2006 (gmt 0)

A newly published patent provides further evidence that Google is developing a voice-activated search engine. Patent number 7027987, of which Google is the assignee, concerns "a voice interface for search engines. Through the use of a language model, phonetic dictionary and acoustic models, a server generates an n-best hypothesis list or word graph." Though the patent was only published this week, the application was originally filed in February 2001, indicating that Google has had the project in the works for some time.

[networks.silicon.com...]

Google is, apparently, suggesting that not too much should be read into this patent being published.