The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Google covering a "voice interface for a search engine, reports Ars Technica's Ken Fisher (via Slashdot). Patent #7,027,987 is for "A system [that] provides search results from a voice search query," according to the patent abstract. Fisher points out that such a service would be a perfect fit for mobile search, writing that "voice recognition could possibly power Google's mobile search right into competition with local 411 services."

The Google technology attempts to surpass that of 411 services, apparently by including a broader voice vocabulary than systems being developed by those services. "Google's system is aimed at making the voice-based search process more like a standard text-based search query," according to the Ars Technica post.

"The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user," according to the abstrac.