Eric Schmidt says Siri poses competitive threat to Google

When Apple introduced Siri, I bet the Cupertino company never thought its voice assistant would help Google, but that's apparently what it's doing. Along with several other services, Siri is being used by Google to defend itself against accusations of anti-competitive behavior.

In his Congressional testimony, Google's Eric Schmidt points to Siri as a rival in the search market. He refers to Siri when he is discussing the evolution of technology and how popular technology (presumably Google's search engine) is replaced by new models. Siri is one of these new models. Schmidt calls Siri a "significant development" and says it is an "entirely new approach to search technology."

And he's right. It may be in the early stages of development, but Siri could have a powerful impact on how people search for content. Search may move away from keyboards, key phrases and static link results and move towards voice, natural language and computational results that use intelligent agents like Wolfram Alpha. Siri could be the critical first step in this evolution.

[Via CNET and Engadget]
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