Google Expected to Target Phone Search

Some analysts even believe phone calls will be listed among the results from using search engines design to mine information stored on someones computer.

One reason searchable voice applications now appears on technologys horizon is because of the growing consumer interest in VOIP (voice over IP), which is freely available software that lets someone make phone calls using his or her Internet connection.

By treating the phone calls just like a Web page, e-mail or Instant Message, VOIP service providers create yet another Internet-based application for search engines to capture, archive and search.

VOIP calls also makes the transcribing process involved in a searchable voice feature much easier because of their revolutionary technology behind them.

The calls are digitized, and then packaged in routing instructions known as the IP, which is the most common way for machines of all kinds to communicate.

It was IP that, in essence, created the common language that Google and other search engines rely on.

For now, though, there are only a relatively few number of VOIP users—an estimated 5 million in the United States, according to several estimates.

Yet VOIP is clearly on the minds of each of the top search companies, and even companies like eBay that seem an unlikely choice to become a telephone operator.

On Aug. 9, Yahoo formally unveiled Yahoo Messenger with Voice, a version of Yahoos Instant Messager that improves upon the calls sound quality.

Microsoft this week said it had acquired San Francisco-based Internet phone company Teleo.

Future versions of MSN Messenger, Microsofts instant messaging application, will use Teleos technology in order to let users make calls from PCs to land-line or mobile phones.

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