With Chrome 46, Google removed the ability to trigger the search feature using user's voice. The feature that is dropped on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platform, is said to be less effective and pose potential privacy issues.
Voice search is Google's feature to automatically listen to user's voice in order to do certain tasks. Since Chrome 35 that was released in May 2014, Chrome users can use the voice search instead of the usual typing.
On desktop computers, users tend to use their keyboard more than their microphone. The reasons for this is because users find typing relatively faster and more convenient than talking.
This habit made the voice search feature on desktop computers rarely useful. As about privacy, people are also worried that Google was listening to their conversations through their computer if the word "OK" and "Google" are said within close proximity.
Users using Chromebooks are still able to conduct voice searches using "OK Google" command. The feature is also kept available on Android mobile operating systems only with Google's Search app. On the Chrome app, Google also dropped the feature altogether.
Voice Searches: More Useful On Mobile
For desktop users, like those using Windows 10 with Cortana enabled. They tend to use the digital assistant more because Cortana does more than just searches. Cortana enables users to interact with the operating system to whole different level and experience, making voice command actually useful on desktop.
Since Google has limited ability on Windows and other "non-Google" powered operating systems, Google can't make this feature useful to users.
But with Chromebooks, this problem does not apply. Chromebooks run on Chrome OS owned by Google. With Google powering its OS, Google has no good reason to drop voice search from it.
By dropping the voice search on desktop but keeping it on mobile, Google also acknowledged that voice search feature is more useful to mobile users than desktop users that tend to keep the habit of using a keyboard as their primary text box input method.
Voice commands are more useful for mobile users especially when they are on the move. With typing on a relatively smaller screen can be a lot more difficult than typing on a keyboard, the concept of using voice as an input method on mobile is more useful than useless.
With voice command, mobile users can interact with their devices without ever seeing the screen. This can come in handy, like when the user is driving.
Siri is another example. Apple's digital assistant that has gathered its own fans is widely popular on iPhones.
Keeping voice searches for Chrome on desktop won't matter much at a first glance. But when considering how much efforts Google has put into it, how much resources are made available just to make sure that the rarely used feature is capable of running flawlessly, and not to mention the developers' efforts to maintain and update the codes. The removal of the feature is indeed necessary and does make sense.
Furthermore, Google can't tolerate any attackers from exploiting it.
Speaking to a computer (or mobile devices) is still regarded as a "foreign" concept that is highly impractical to most people. Although speech recognition and speech-to-text translation has improved drastically in the recent years, it's still far from perfect. But as more voice-enabled features are introduced, and more people are depending on it, voice search will certainly be the input of choice.