Voice recognition companies are talking again; but will consumers listen?

"Agent, agent, agent."

If you are like me, your experience with most of the voice recognition systems offered by the airlines devolves quickly to a frustrated plea for human help. Still, while voice interaction is still not at the point HAL 9000 promised by 1992, there's little doubt that it has come a long way in the last 10-15 years.

Today, Yahoo announced the broad availability of voice-enabled search on the oneSearch mobile platform and a concurrent investment in vlingo, the partner providing the voice technology:

With the voice-enabled version of Yahoo! oneSearch, consumers can search for anything, including flight numbers, locations, Web site names, local restaurants, and more, by simply speaking...Whereas most mobile voice recognition systems are specific to vertical categories such as local listings, Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice lets consumers perform "wide open" searches - returning relevant results for practically every kind of query.