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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Source: https://docs.google.com/a/cbsinteractive.com/viewer?a=v&pid=…

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When Apple introduced Siri, I bet the Cupertino company never thought its voice assistant would help Google, but that's apparently what...

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Baris Bicer

Can we just let Google be the only legal corporate monopoly?

...Wait, that's a horrible idea. My loyalty to Google shall only go so far. Still, their products, whether bought or built in-house, are the best things that ever happened to me.

November 08 2011 at 5:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jethro

Then make something better!

November 07 2011 at 6:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mkesten

A corollary to Schmidt's concern is that because Siri works on the Cloud, Apple will be collecting real behavioural information not previously collected by google or facebook for that matter, as in the commands users give Siri. That has tremendous value to advertisers, political action groups, and especially academics. I don't know about other countries, but I can say for sure that Canada's privacy laws are not ready for this kind of data collection.

November 07 2011 at 5:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Daniel Swartz

But Siri points me to Google when doing a search...

November 07 2011 at 4:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Daniel Swartz's comment

Dorv

Say Apple builds Siri usage by putting it on all phones, iPads, iPod touches, and Mac computers (Or, if not all, just do an expansion past just the iPhone 4s). It gets the entirety of the Apple user base accustomed to using it to search for everything.

Then, tomorrow, it flips a switch, and starts using Bing as its primary search engine.

Sure, it wouldn't put Google under, but it would definitely have an impact on their numbers.

November 08 2011 at 8:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Art

Oh what an irony...only a few years ago Eric Schmidt was on the Apple's board and now he's using Apple's Siri to protect the company from monopoly allegations. I wish Steve Jobs could hear it, he would definitely chuckle on it :-)

November 07 2011 at 4:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply