I can't speak for James, who is not in the office this week.
I can say that apart from the development costs (which would be significant--not a couple hundred, or even a thousand dollars), the other challenge is that Google's Speech API is cloud-based, and they charge an ongoing license fee for developers to use the service.
https://cloud.google.com/speech/pricingThis is not particularly feasible for VC when you consider that most VC users refuse to pay for even the very modest cost of a one-time user license. Who would pay for the monthly usage of a global user base? What happens when Google changes its policies, which they have done regularly with all of their other services, requiring constant development updates or leading to the possible cancellation of the service entirely?
Again,
while I cannot and do not speak for James, my guess is that an entirely new program as sophisticated and versatile as VC built on the Google platform is neither cost-effective nor sustainable for a small, independent developer in today's market--even assuming one is comfortable using an entirely cloud-based speech solution.
At some point, James may have ideas for a smaller scale solution that is not exactly what you wish but that may still help. I'm sure he'll let you know if something like that evolves.
