April 2010, Google shut down its voice search service in India, which essentially relied on speech recognition technology. The biggest challenge with speech recognition, as far as India is concerned is the varied accents Indians have.
Google cited the launch of mobile app as a reason to shut down the voice search service, though in reality the voice search (touted as Justdial competition) never really took off.
Moving on, Google has launched ‘The Great IGoogle Voice Search–How Varied Are Indian Accents [Torture Tests]ndian Accent Test’ to test its new product by giving tongue twisters to people and hear them out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Dd5IJf6ME
Some of our favourites are-
Biharish Tongue Twister Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrY5SbaH0BY
Bengalish Tongue Twister Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S_NCMK8tuI
Malayalish Tongue Twister Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=camTUjPY8EM
Unity in diversity!