This week saw the publication of Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report , packed full of data and insights into the development of the internet and digital technology across the globe. Particularly of interest to us here at Search Engine Watch is a 21-page section on the evolution of voice and natural language as a computing interface, titled ‘ Re-Imagining Voice = A New Paradigm in Human-Computer Interaction ’. It looks at trends in recognition accuracy, voice assistants, voice search and sales of devices like the Amazon Echo to build up an accurate picture of how voice interface has progressed over the past few years, and is likely to progress in the future
With every new development in search technology, search engines are becoming more and more futuristic. With voice search and digital assistants letting you talk to search engines, and natural language search turning searching into a conversation, real-life search engines increasingly resemble something we used to only see in sci-fi films. But there are still so many things that we’d love to be able to search for, which are unfortunately beyond the bounds of what is physically possible. Here, then, are six sadly fictional search engines that we only wish existed.