Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google was interviewed by Charlie Rose this week.
In the interview Charlie Rose got Marissa to discuss the expected advancements Google will have within 10 years (this transcript snippet from TechCrunch):
Marissa Mayer:
So for example we’d like to make progress on both vision and voice, [unintelligible] what’s in an image, how well can we recognize it —Charlie Rose:
And where are we on that?Marissa Mayer:
– a spoken image and a spoken word. And I think voice is actually a lot further along than images in recognizing shapes and that. I mean, if you look at the academic research, that’s generally the case. So sometimes you have to follow the technology, what’s possible. I think we’re going to have really good voice search, really good speech to text on YouTube videos so you’ll be able to search it, that will happen sooner than you’ll be able to say give Google an image and say find other images like this or find me images of a monkey, those types of things.Charlie Rose:
When will it happen?Marissa Mayer:
I think that the voice breakthrough will probably happen in the next five years, maybe 10, and I think that — and then I think the vision will probably happen in more than a 10-year timeframe, maybe 15. Those are of course guesses just off the top of my head but —
The whole interview is about one hour but if you want some insight into the powerhouse that drives our Internet experience then this is a worthwhile investment of time.
Here is a link to the Google Video shown above and a full transcript of the interview courtesy of TechCrunch.