NEW YORK -- Search is a huge and evolving business. Facebook, not a traditional search company, recently said its own search offering is booming. Incumbent search giant Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently said that it will move beyond keywords at SES. And at the SpeechTEK conference last week, big search players talked up opportunities in mobile search.

"Companies are excited, eager, and fearful about the revenue opportunity in mobile search," said Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Senior Researcher, Geoffrey Zweig, who spoke on a voice search panel at SpeechTEK here.

"Nobody wants to be left behind," he added. He noted that companies have a strong business model for traditional Web-based search, but mobile voice search is a different animal.

While many see opportunities, they also see barriers, panelists said. Services are restricted by factors as various as noise conditions and the need to limit the vocabulary size of recognition engines, which are also known as recognizers, said moderator Michael Cohen, manager of Google's speech technology group.

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