It's time for voice search to shine, are you ready?
Voice search has been the perpetual “next big thing” for nearly a decade, now it's the real deal.
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Voice search has been the perpetual “next big thing” for nearly a decade. Google Assistant debuted in 2006 and Siri in 2007. At launch, these devices were heralded as game changers for search because they had the potential to disrupt how search was conducted. The reality was that, beyond answering simple questions such as what the weather is or what the current time is, their potential was massively underutilized.
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I think things are different now, and voice search is finally ready to be a thing, and it has everything to do with Google cramming Gemini into every device that can process sound. This isn’t another incremental improvement to voice recognition accuracy or another celebrity voice option. Gemini is a fundamental change in what voice assistants can actually do, and it’s arriving at the exact moment when the infrastructure to support it is already sitting in millions of homes.
Why now?
The problem with voice search has never really been that people don’t want to talk to their devices. The problem is that the devices have been useless. You could ask Siri or Google Assistant basic questions and get basic answers, but the moment you wanted to do something even slightly complex, it just couldn’t do it. There was no way to have an honest conversation or even ask a fundamental follow-up question that required deeper thinking. The assistant couldn’t remember context and couldn’t handle the messy, non-linear way people actually communicate.
Voice search became this weird thing you’d try once, realize it sucked, and then go back to typing. For anything that required a meaningful response, people would end up pulling out their phone and typing anyway.
(Paid users of this newsletter can download a short voice playbook here. )
Gemini changes the equation because it can actually think and reason. You can ask a question, get an answer, then ask a follow-up that builds on what you just discussed without having to repeat yourself or rephrase everything. You can be vague, change your mind mid-sentence, or approach a problem from a weird angle, and it’ll figure out what you mean. It’s like talking to someone who’s actually listening instead of a robot waiting for keywords.
Gemini everywhere
This isn’t just about smart searches on phones; Google is pushing AI into Nest devices, Android phones, and basically anything with a speaker and a microphone. The smart home products are already in all the right places. People bought Google Home speakers years ago, and those devices are still sitting on kitchen counters and bedroom nightstands, plugged in and connected to wifi. All Google has to do is update the software, and suddenly, millions of devices get dramatically smarter overnight. This, of course, doesn’t just impact Google; now that Gemini is powering Apple's intelligence, it will make every follow-on device smart too.
Given the sudden rise in companies competing against Google's search dominance, this distribution advantage is enormous. While Amazon, with its Echo devices, is playing catch-up on AI, and Meta is launching wearables, this helps shift the search paradigm toward voice, where Google will be the leader.
OpenAI played a role, too, in helping Google dominate this space by showing the world that AI can be beneficial, and everyone is using it to do things. When they move to do it with voice, Google is ready to help.
Voice is a better interface
Voice search makes even more sense once the AI can handle it. Talking is faster than typing. It’s easier when your hands are full, when you’re carrying something, or safer when you’re driving. It’s more natural for people who aren’t comfortable with technology or who have accessibility needs. The only reason typing remained dominant is that it produced better results. Remove that advantage, and the friction tips the other way.
The integration possibilities are massive, too. Gemini doesn’t just answer questions. It can reason through complex requests, interface with other services, and handle tasks that used to require multiple apps and a lot of clicking.
Want to book a restaurant with outdoor seating that is within 20 minutes of your house and can accommodate a party of six this Saturday? Find a plumber who’s available today, has good reviews, and won’t charge a fortune? Compare prices for a specific product across multiple stores and tell me whether it’s cheaper to buy online or in person. These are the kinds of requests that are painful on a phone but natural in conversation.
Monetization is ready to go
Google also has the business model to make this work. They make money from search, and voice search is still search. Every question asked through a voice assistant is an opportunity to serve information, suggest products, or connect people with businesses. The better the voice interface works, the more people use it, the more data Google collects, and the more targeted its advertising becomes. They have every incentive to make this the default way people find information.
The smart home angle matters more than people realize. Once your voice assistant can control your lights, thermostat, security system, TV, and everything else, it becomes the central interface for your entire living space. You stop thinking of it as a search tool and start thinking of it as the way you interact with your environment. That stickiness is what makes voice search finally work. Voice assistants are not competing with your phone anymore; they are infrastructure.
Adoption will grow
We’re also seeing the first generation of kids growing up talking to AI like it’s completely normal. They’re asking Gemini to help with homework, explain concepts, or settle arguments. My son even uses it to find Waldo. For them, talking to an AI isn’t weird or novel. It’s just how you get information. As they age up, voice-first behavior becomes the default behavior.
The context window is the real killer feature here. These models can remember entire conversations and pull from them. You can have a 20-minute discussion about planning a trip, then, three hours later, say, “book that restaurant we talked about,” and it knows precisely what you mean. That persistence of memory makes voice interaction cumulative instead of transactional. Every question doesn’t have to be self-contained anymore.
The compounding advantage of ambient availability is underrated. When voice actually works, you use it more. The more you use it, the more you notice situations where it’s useful. Before long, you’re asking it things you never would have bothered to search for because the friction was too high. That expansion of “searchable moments” throughout the day is where the real growth happens. It’s not replacing existing search behavior; it’s creating entirely new search behavior that didn’t exist because it wasn’t convenient enough.
You know how every LLM response ends with a question? Imagine that happening on a voice assistant, and now you are having a conversation all day.
There’s a chicken-and-egg problem with any new interface. People don’t use it because it doesn’t work well, and it doesn’t work well because not enough people use it to generate the data needed to improve it. Gemini breaks that cycle by working well enough right now to be genuinely helpful, deployed on hardware that’s already everywhere, arriving at a moment when people are ready to trust AI with real tasks. That’s not a guarantee of success, but it’s the first time all the pieces have actually been in place at the same time. Voice search has been waiting for this moment, and the most innovative marketers will be ahead of that curve.
(Paid users of this newsletter can download a short voice playbook here. )
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