Google removing OK Google voice search from Chrome on desktop

The removal will occur with the release of the next version of Chrome- Chrome 47- that is expected to arrive in six weeks.

Chrome OS users will still be able to take advantage of the feature, but users on Windows, Mac and Linux can start saying their goodbyes now. Google hasn’t dropped support for voice input altogether. VentureBeat asked Google why they had made a decision to remove “OK Google” from the desktop versions of Chrome. Sadly, they’ll have to do something as archaic as actually clicking their mouse to open Google.com and click on the little microphone icon to activate a voice search.

For many people that work full days using the Chrome browser by Google there is a great deal of disappointment that the “Ok Google” option is gone.

Chrome 46 will no longer listen in to everything you say on certain Web pages on the off chance that you might invoke a Web search with the magical utterance, “OK Google”. In Chrome, the hot-word was never enabled by default and had to be manually configured from within the browser’s settings. It looks like Google has also removed the ability to perform a voice search by saying “OK Google” to your computer. If you want to do a voice search, you will have to touch a button. This, however, does not mean that you can not use voice search on the latest Chrome version.

Though Google tried to match up with Cortana and Siri with OK Google for Chrome, it simply wasn’t accessible and available at all times. In an effort to simplify the browser, the company is clearing out the areas that most people infrequently use. Google said Chrome’s notification center is being removed because nobody uses it; that may be the case with the OK Google hotword.