Google promised that we’d get hands-free voice search in Chrome back at I/O 2013, and it’s delivering today with the beta of its Voice Search Hotword extension for desktop Chrome 31 users.
As long as you’re either sitting at Google’s home page or have a new browser tab open, the add-on lets you start a search by saying “OK Google,” much as you would in Android 4.4 KitKat. Anyone eager to move beyond mouse-and-keyboard queries can grab the extension today from the Chrome Web Store.