Yahoo adds voice to mobile searches

Search firm Yahoo is bringing speech search to mobile users

Yahoo has added voice enabled search to its oneSearch 2.0, its browser designed for use on mobile phones.

The firm announced yesterday that it had worked with voice recognition firm vlingo on the development of the service that will let users search simply by 'asking' their device.

The firm made the announcement at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, with Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Connected Life at Yahoo, saying, " With the launch of Yahoo! oneSearch in 2007, we revolutionised mobile search by re-creating search specifically for the mobile phone, focusing on answers, not just Web links. With Yahoo! oneSearch 2.0, we are fundamentally changing the way consumers use the Internet on their mobile phones.”

OneSearch is Yahoo's version of the mobile internet, "With oneSearch, anything you would search for at your desktop, you can now ask for from your phone," the firm said. At the end of March it added Search Assist to the service, meaning that users only have to input the first few letters of a query before being suggested the full term.