Solved Google's voice services (search, docs, translate) not working in Vivaldi

Pathduck

@Hunkydory Not really - on Android the Google Voice API is a part of the OS and can be used by all browsers.

DoctorG

@Hunkydory But the Windows OS has no Google Voice API, thats why Vivaldi can not use.

Hunkydory

do you think they will introduce, my sight is not so good so the voice search really helps?

DoctorG

@Hunkydory For people with disablities such voice search is really useful.
As i know, it is planned that Vivaldi devs will add such search to help more users, but i do not know when this will happen.
Perhaps when Vivaldi has its own search page. Who knows.

Pathduck

@Hunkydory Bing voice search works on Windows at least.

Yeah not a good choice if you prefer Google but at least it works.

Eggcorn

@Pathduck I can confirm that, Bing voice search works on my Windows computer's Vivaldi. To use it, click the microphone icon on the Bing website's search bar.

It'd be nice if Vivaldi would support voice-search for any search-engine, like Edge does. That would work around this problem with Google voice-search not working. ~~I'll start a feature request for that.~~ Edit: There's already a feature request for that.

On a related note: I have to give Microsoft credit here. Vivaldi's overall a better browser than Edge, but there are some areas (such as voice-search) where Edge out-Vivaldis Vivaldi. Microsoft's come a long way from the bad old days of Internet Explorer 6!

DoctorG

@Eggcorn said in Google Voice Search:

It'd be nice if Vivaldi would support voice-search for any search-engine

Such voice search feature creates more traffic, such has to be paid to Google, Microsoft & Co.

Eggcorn

@DoctorG Why? I can type "test" (for example) into Vivaldi's search-bar, press Enter, and get a search-results page. Vivaldi gets money for that (if I use a search engine that came with Vivaldi, except Google). Why would it be different for voice-search?

DoctorG

@Eggcorn said in Google Voice Search:

Why would it be different for voice-search?

Ask @jane.n from Vivaldi team.

Eggcorn

@DoctorG said in Google Voice Search:

Ask @jane.n from Vivaldi team.

Okay. @jane.n, can you answer my question?

Pathduck

@Eggcorn Don't think there's any need for Jane to answer that, it can be easily "googled":
https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/pricing

For (unrooted) Android devices of course, these basically run a Google OS, so Speech-to-Text is a part of the features deal (and probably money exchanged between say Google, Samsung et al., I have no idea. For Apple devices, it's probably similar, probably a company has to pay the $$$ for an Apple Developer License to use the API.

For Windows devices obviously, they can use MS Speech API, but again, comes at a cost. It works in Bing because, well, Microsoft... it does not work in Google because ... competition and free market etc etc.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/

These companies make money, they are not doing charity and speech-to-text costs servers, storage, bandwidth and development time...

Eggcorn

@Pathduck But that's for Google and Microsoft's/Bing's speech-to-text service. I'm asking about the Vivaldi browser having it's own speech-to-text built into the browser, not renting one from Google or Microsoft.

DoctorG

@Eggcorn said in Google Voice Search:

it's own speech-to-text built into the browser

With more Vivaldi servers, software and more financial resoruces that can be in near future.

iAN CooG

@DoctorG said in Google Voice Search:

more financial resoruces

that's the key, which many users never take into consideration.

Eggcorn

@DoctorG Servers? Unless I'm mistaken: Speach-to-text existed before the Internet was mainstream. And I'd imagine there's already open-source speech-to-text code that Vivaldi can use.

Or would the quality just be too low, if the speech-to-text was performed on the computer running Vivaldi rather than on a remote server?

Pathduck

@Eggcorn Maybe you're thinking about text-to-speech, which is easy...

Speech-to-text is a whole other ballgame. Unless you're thinking about "Only plain US/Queen's English speakers, no dialects or accents please, talk slowly and clearly and don't swallow your vowels"

Or would the quality just be too low, if the speech-to-text was performed on the computer running Vivaldi rather than on a remote server?

That's a very specific technical question I doubt anyone here is qualified to answer, even the V team because they've probably not even started thinking about doing something like this...

Should the local installation contain all the necessary data to figure out what someone is saying... say, like a couple terabytes of voice samples - AND the processing power to search this data within a reasonable time to find a match?

Eggcorn

@Pathduck I think you just answered the question: Sounds like the quality would be too low to be worth the time and effort implementing this feature would take.

Fortunately, the Bing website itself still has voice-search. Perhaps that's enough to implement it into Vivaldi. Bing's already the default search-engine in Vivaldi. Maybe Microsoft would make voice-search available for free, so long it was used just for Bing searches.

DoctorG

@Eggcorn Bing? Windows?
I guess Vivaldi devs will not implement this as it would exist as a Windows-only "feature".
Excluding other OS is not the goal and not Vivaldi philosophy.

Eggcorn

@DoctorG Why would it be Windows-only, what does operating system have to do with this?

DoctorG

@Eggcorn There is no Bing voice service on Mac and Linux OS which can be used.