Fact · Speech recognition
2GB
Google said its traditional server-side recognizer used a search graph of almost 2 GB, too large for a phone, which is why it needed a connection.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“the search graph remains quite large, almost 2GB for our production models. Since this is not something that could be hosted easily on a mobile phone, this method requires online connectivity to work properly.”
An All-Neural On-Device Speech Recognizer, Johan Schalkwyk, Google Research Blog, 2019, Offline Recognition section.
Open the original- What it measures
- It explains why early phone dictation needed the internet.
- What it does not show
- Describes Google's production systems before 2019.
Source
Used to calculate
- Google's pre-2019 server speech graph, almost 2 GB, was about 25 times the size of the 80 MB on-device Gboard model it moved to the phone.
- Google's 2019 server-side search graph was about 25 times the size of the on-device Gboard model it announced in the same post.
- In 2019, Google's older server search graph was no more than 25 times the size of the on-device Gboard speech recognizer.
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