You can no longer say “OK Google” and cause Chrome to perform a voice-based search, at least on desktop. The latest version has dropped this support.
As spotted by VentureBeat, buried in the developer documentation about changes to the latest version released — Chrome 46 — is a note that this has been removed:
Disable ‘Ok Google’ hotwording on desktop Chrome.
This feature has been removed completely from Windows, Mac and Linux
builds of Chrome. ChromeOS is unaffected.
Those who use Chromebooks — which are based on Chrome — still have this feature for their laptops. It also does not impact Chrome for mobile.
VentureBeat says it was removed due to lack of use.
Postscript: Google has updated us confirming they “haven’t seen many users utilize this feature on these platforms,” which is the reason they removed it.