Why focus on election material?
Google Audio Indexing is a showcase for speech technology. Political videos and election materials are a special case of broadcast news content, a domain that has received a lot of academic and industry attention and is known to perform well. By making the technology available to a wide audience, we hope to both offer a useful service and learn what our users think of this new technology. Moreover, on this election year, what information could be more important than what describes the views, actions and platforms of the two presidential candidates? Google Audio Indexing and the Google Elections Video Search gadget are part of a broader effort around politics, with initiatives such as CNN/YouTube debates , YouChoose , and Google Checkout for political contributions .
