Death of the mouse! 6 new ways to control your PC

Imagine lazily lounging with your laptop while watching TV, and commanding your computer to open Facebook (FB) or Google without lifting a finger. Google is making it possible for developers to launch voice control applications for the Chrome browser. And it would probably prefer that you tell your computer to launch Google+ as opposed to its top social networking rival.

Google (GOOG) recently announced a Chrome Beta update that includes the Web Speech API for developers.

Related story: When Google met Siri

"[I]n the near future you'll be able to talk apps into doing all sorts of things," Google said in its post. For example? "Imagine if you could dictate documents, have a freestyle rap battle, or control game characters with your browser using only your voice."

While Google's foray into voice control for the desktop is just getting started, in October the company released a mobile voice-search competitor to Siri -- on Apple's (AAPL) own App Store, no less.

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