Google's Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not

It'd be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you'd sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google's speech-to-text engine -- it replaces notorious curses like the F and S words with a '####,' which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD's now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has come up with a good reason:

We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.

Kudos for caring, but it wouldn't hurt to have an on / off option either -- after all, it's not like we're asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we'll promise to use a swear jar.

[techi25 Posted Jan 24th 2010 7:46PM]

@pachi72

Yay a Apple hater! I've been waiting for a ignorant person to say something on here. Btw nice originality with the insult lol.

[Karoke Singer Posted Jan 24th 2010 7:56PM]

The Droid also has the censor. I did a search for F___ing (word for rooster) and it came back with Your Search - #### #### - did not match any documents

[zidan87 Posted Jan 24th 2010 8:02PM]

the google mobile app on the iPhone has been doing this for a while

[lineman78 Posted Jan 24th 2010 8:06PM]

Ran into the same problem on my Hero with HandCent's voice to sms feature.

[shinrasboy Posted Jan 24th 2010 8:23PM]

#### "pinch to zoom" What's the appeal anyway? I like the zoom button that actually sorts things out and formats...am I the only one who feels like pinch zoom is just a novelty?

[JRza Posted Jan 24th 2010 9:04PM]

Haven't read all the comments, but anyone else appreciate the irony of Google's flagship phone censoring speech to text, but Google is about to pull out of China because it doesn't want to comply with the Chinese govt's censorship policies?

[Stormbringer Posted Jan 24th 2010 9:18PM]

Maybe you've been not careful with the fireworks, but I have 5 fingers and can use two of them to pinch and zoom with one hand...

[iPaul Posted Jan 24th 2010 9:28PM]

since when are we in China?

the first amendment bitches, it's so frickin' important it's frickin' 1st

how dare Google!

Google should be a profane word. Go play with your your googles?!

[etrnldrk Posted Jan 24th 2010 9:43PM]

@(Unverified)

So you'd rather send your grandmother that you went to look at some fucks in the park when you really meant to say ducks? Or you text your boss to see if he would shit something for you, rather than ship it for you (could lead to a very colorful conversation afterwards).

Your freedom of speech isn't in question here, since you can still say what you want, it's to prevent confusion and possible nasty situations that could arise, and to possibly cover Google's ass if someone was fired or beat down due to a misrepresented word or phrase was to be sent.

[iPaul Posted Jan 24th 2010 10:07PM]

@etrnldrk that's the biggest load of total bullshit I've ever heard.

If's and but's and maybe's or some people think or some people say.

your argument sinks.

my freedom of speech is exactly what this is about.

[yyandrew Posted Jan 25th 2010 3:30AM]

@etrnldrk

well the thing is, once you use the text-to-speech tool and you notice a profane word that wasn't supposed to be there, you can go edit it manually and then send it to your grandmother and boss. not a big deal

[etrnldrk Posted Feb 11th 2010 12:02AM]

@yyandrew I think it's Google's way of protecting the lazy among us who would rather not proofread and just fire out their messages as fast as possible.

[iPaul Posted Jan 24th 2010 10:08PM]

hypothetical situations do not trump the 1st amendment perhaps

[Liberty Posted Jan 24th 2010 10:26PM]

Pathetic. Can we please not have this nannyfication of our society? Censurship and puritanism is a scurge of our time.

Så fuck any steps that tries to nannyfy our world.

[aria Posted Jan 24th 2010 10:56PM]

#### Google!, Get an iPhone.

[pika2000 Posted Jan 24th 2010 10:58PM]

Well, the question is, what would Google censor next? Profanity is one thing. Censorship is a dangerous line to cross.

[mwdavis84 Posted Jan 25th 2010 12:01AM]

@pika2000 this comment is stupid as hell. While I think its dumb for Google to censor bad words, to insinuate some sort of bullshit theory about actual meaningful censorship is fear-mongering by a moron.

[aria Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:04PM]

I thought Google was against censorship?

[DOUGSKEEZ Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:13PM]

The voice-to-text on the app market has been doing the same for my droid... its funny. old news, but funny.

[gavin721 Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:27PM]

Holy Android fan boys... that wonderful "OPEN" platform is now censoring speech?!? Lets add that to the list of hacking your bank account, lack of multi touch in the US... Top that off with some nice side of #### customer service and 3G issues... Nexus One is truly one bad### pc of hardware.

[codebreaker Posted Mar 19th 2010 1:28AM]

@gavin721
still pretty open you ####
How's that open platform for your i#### workin for ya? Not getting google voice i hear, how sad.
Switching search providers over to B#### i hear, how sad.

Now go away trolly-mc-fanboy

[Methoxychlor Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:32PM]

But does it censor the word "Ender"?

[Crabs Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:51PM]

@Methoxychlor

You have just become my new hero. So long as you were referring to OSC's Ender Wiggin Saga, and not something else that I am unaware of.

[Methoxychlor Posted Jan 25th 2010 12:33PM]

@Crabs
"Ender? The Xenocide?"

[Methoxychlor Posted Jan 25th 2010 10:25PM]

@Crabs
"The system doesn't accept any dirty words."

[Crabs Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:50PM]

Droid does…too.

When you use the voice search, it'll filter it. I tried to ask it for "fun shit to do," and got back "fun #### to do," which really wasn't helpful. Of course, "fun shit to do" probably wouldn't have given me the best results, either.

[mwdavis84 Posted Jan 24th 2010 11:59PM]

oh wow, WHAT A SHOCKER. Engadget snuck in a pinch to zoom.

Jokestores, Engadget, they're running out of you.

[CultOfOne Posted Jan 25th 2010 12:03AM]

I love swearing as much as I love tech !!!

What do I do now??

[codebreaker Posted Mar 19th 2010 1:29AM]

@CultOfOne #### man, i ain't got a #### idea.

[va jj Posted Jan 25th 2010 12:38AM]

this is old. this was feature is also on the moto droid as well.

[clinte Posted Jan 25th 2010 1:17AM]

So, the Nexus One bashing goes on at Engadget?
I'm still waiting for the day when i can read the following Text at the Top on this Site: "Engadget for Android: download the app now". Still waiting...

[Captain Caveman Posted Jan 25th 2010 1:42AM]

The Droid does this also. I was trying out the speech recognition in the messaging app and noticed it. I tried several words and they all were blocked. Even words that would fit into a gray area as to how they were being used.
Its almost as bad as when words I write being converted to ducking instead of what I really wanted to say.

[Teslanaut Posted Jan 25th 2010 2:42AM]

China censors stuff. Lots of stuff.

Google is fighting China.

Google is censoring stuff on the Nexus one.

There's supposed to be something here...

[KGB Posted Jan 25th 2010 3:26AM]

I'de love to see google bleep out words "blow" and "job" in the same sentence.

[Tassadar Posted Jan 25th 2010 4:29AM]

Well, the milestone also does this with voice search

[jareth86 Posted Jan 25th 2010 6:09AM]

Dear Google,

Adults swear, get over it. You are supposed to be a monolithic corporation; are you telling me that you're scared of a handful of soccer moms?!

[codebreaker Posted Mar 19th 2010 1:31AM]

@jareth86 Huge amount of mobile devices, someone gets offended, case gets filed, lawyers make up an excuse, class action, everyone-who-owns-android-platform-phone vs. google.

also, what soccer moms don't use that $10 LG Cookie?

[derrickONLINE Posted Jan 25th 2010 8:14AM]

Google always has a good ####### excuse.

[micanuck Posted Jan 25th 2010 8:52AM]

wow... extremely lame... i thought Google was supposed to be progressive and be AGAINST CENSORSHIP???? (unless this is HTC's doing... which wouldn't surprise me... HTC SUCKS #### ) LOL!!!!!!!!

[richnz Posted Jan 25th 2010 5:35PM]

Does the Iphone have speech to text? What? Not yet? Why the hell not? This is ridiculous! Pinch to zoom, but no speech to text, damn how does the Engadget Iphone fanbois manage to make it through the day just pinch zooming.......

[youreanidiot Posted Jan 25th 2010 5:42PM]

Wow guys stop picking on the Nexus One, it's sales numbers should show that people don't care! oh wait...

[Jeff Hodges Posted Jan 25th 2010 6:50PM]

On the palm pre when you go to send a message to a person in the messaging app it will remove any sort of lude reference you have in someone's name in your contact list when you do a search. The weird thing is that it shows up just fine in the contacts list.

[genjoke Posted Jan 25th 2010 7:21PM]

That's soooooo American!! I always laugh when I see the concern Americans have with words such as "fuck", "shit" etcetera…

[goldcd Posted Jan 25th 2010 7:23PM]

Just a quick heads-up for any British owners. Whilst I can verify that it does indeed censor swearing, we are still allowed to shout 'cock', 'minge' and 'bollocks' successfully into our phones.