Samsung Smart TVs aren't the only devices that can "listen" to voice commands, convert them to text, and execute them. Google Voice Search does exactly the same thing, except it records more of what it should and sends the messages to the location it wants.
The browser extension, although currently in beta, is designed to allow users to enter their searches into Google's search engine without having to type the string, by voicing their queries and then simply saying "Ok Google."
This only requires permission for Google Voice to use the microphone available on the computer to fulfill the command.
However, after reading Google Voice's terms of service and privacy policy documents, Sean Sullivan, a security consultant at F-Secure, found that in addition to actually searching for the user's query, the extension also hands over to Google a few seconds preceding the command.
This means that the recording feature is always enabled, otherwise it would not be able to capture the audio before the command characterized by the expression “Ok Google”.
This makes some sense, that the sound, i.e. before the utterance is captured, since the characteristic command must be given to determine when the user wants to perform a search. On the other hand, however, this does not make it legal to send all the data to Google.
So it would be a good idea to always have the application disabled and only activate it when the user needs to use it.
