Have you ever been on the highway thinking “I have to Google that”? You probably have and some of you might have even have done it. With the risk of a ticket (at least here in Holland you are not allowed to do that) or worse, the risk of an accident.
In the English speaking countries like the UK, US or Australia that wasn’t an issue anymore when Google decided to launch their Voice Search. But you might have guessed it, that was all in English. For those coming from a non-English speaking country there still was the danger of ruining your car when trying to type a search on your phone while driving.
But Google does look to other countries. Though sometimes it takes a while they do role out their stuff in different languages. In the case of voice search after English they started of with Mandarin Chinese and Japanese (might sound surprising but with the size of the mobile markets there it really isn’t). After that it was time for French, German, Italian, and Spanish and now finally starting October the ‘smaller’ languages are one by one getting their voice search. Russian, Polish, Czech and Turkish were the first ‘smaller’ languages and now also Dutch (yeah) and even Zulu and Afrikaans, as well as South African-accented English are now supported on Android.
So the world can now safely search Google when driving. Right…?
Bas van den Beld
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