Earlier this week, Google Inc. received a patent regarding several methods and systems to provide search results directly from a voice search query. U.S. Patent No. 7,027,987 ("Voice interface for a search engine"), issued on April 11th, discloses methods and systems “for supporting voice queries in information retrieval systems. The first method that provides search results includes “receiving a voice search query from a user; deriving one or more recognition hypotheses from the voice search query, each recognition hypothesis being associated with a weight; constructing a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses; providing the weighted boolean query to a search system; and providing results of the search system.” Aside from the addition of including one or more search terms regarding the aforementioned recognition hypotheses, the first independent claim is described in that fashion, with additional detail regarding the construction of the weighted boolean query including “determining a length of a shortest recognition hypothesis, pruning a length of each recognition hypothesis up to the length of the shortest recognition hypothesis, determining a length of a longest pruned recognition hypothesis, selecting a number of recognition hypotheses based on one or more query parameters, determining term weights, and forming a weighted boolean query.” This patent states that it addresses the need of a voice interface effective for search engines, addressing the problems of high word error rates and limited sets of word choices used in some voice interfaces.

U.S. Patent No. 7,027,987: LINK
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