Voice Search: Getting Siri-ly
October 26, 2011
There is more hostility in the next search interface wars, and this time it sounds vaguely similar to a gaggle of middle school girls badmouthing the one lucky kid who got the newest thing.
At the recent AllThingsD conference, Google’s head of Android, Andy Rubin, made some snide comments about Apple’s Siri interface. Rubin said there shouldn’t be a distinction between tablet apps and phone apps, and he also believes your phone shouldn’t be an assistant. It should be for communicating. He must have momentarily forgot about Android’s apps and Google’s voice searches. Microsoft’s Windows Phone president, Andy Lee, also criticized Siri, saying it “isn’t super useful” and that Windows Phone 7’s voice interactivity uses “the full power of the internet, rather than a certain subset.
Fast Company’s article, “Why Google And Microsoft Are Bad-Mouthing Apple’s Chatty Siri” tells us more about the new interface:
“One thing Siri does that may have both Google and Microsoft quaking in their boots is to act as a first sift “layer” for users trying to query the internet for information. When you speak to Siri the data gets whizzed off by Apple to its cloud servers, where the speech is processed and then interpreted–a process that, we imagine, involves trying to see if the query is answerable via a fact-based query to Wolfram Alpha… or a review-based query via Yelp…”
In my opinion, Google and Microsoft must be nervous. Maybe Siri could interfere with Google and Bing ad revenue? Siri is offering a very novel way of interacting with your device, a program that is just in its beta phase with plans to move to the iPad and the Mac. Looks like Google and Microsoft may be getting a bad rep for falling behind, and my advice is to leave the gossip for middle school and catch up.
Andrea Hayden, October 26, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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