More proof that Apple’s Siri is intended to be a Google killer

“Mouses, point-and-click, and tablets all existed before Apple, but Apple found a way of getting a lot more people to use all of those than had occurred previously with Xerox PARC, Microsoft or whoever. The same thing – in my view – is going to happen with Siri,” Eric Jackson writes for Forbes.

“I’ve been out of the speech business for a few years now, but Siri is so much more advanced than any other speech application I’ve seen. And, there appears to be significant mainstream interest in the app in a way I’ve never witnessed before,” Jackson writes. “The fact that Apple is putting some big marketing dollars behind it is also significant.”

Jackson writes, “I’ve argued that Siri is training folks to get their information in a new way than plopping themselves in front of a search box on their PCs or post-PC devices. Over time, they will come to trust Siri more and more for their information retrieval needs. That will divert search queries to Siri instead of Google. That means AdWords doesn’t get to work its magic against those queries and Google ad revenues go down – maybe significantly. And in that way, Siri is a Google Killer.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dominick P.” for the heads up.]

69 Comments

  1. Search engines (like Google) will just start adding “adsense voice” ads to all speech based queries (from Siri or anywhere). And if anything, these voice ads may make search engines more money since they make a ‘stronger’ ad impression on the user than some text ad (which intelligent users train themselves to ignore)

    SIRI is just a great new interface, not just for search, but a whole host of things.

    I don’t see anyone killing anything.

    1. So you think before Siri give you the answer you want, Siri put out some ad voices like “Google is the king of search. Do you search in Google. And eat sh*t.”. And you think user will put up with it. You are a damn fool.

      1. One reason I enjoy ADN is the absence of offensive language such as yours. Calling people schoolyard names demeans only you. Have you noticed no one uses such language here? Try YouTube instead. Thank goodness the tone here is primarily intelligent and factual. I learn a lot. You could also learn English grammar by reading others’ opinions, even if you disagree. Whew!

        1. Ah but people do indeed use such language here. Disgraceful, I agree, but such is life in MDN where cretinism coexists with reasoned discourse, swagger with skepticism, and schoolyard brutality with helpful encouragement.

    2. What Siri pronounces is controlled by Apple. There is no way Apple would allow any noisy Google voice advertisements to butt-in in Siri answers.

      However, Google’s own version of AI assistant — even though head of Android Rubin lied recently saying they are not interested in that — will force advertisements into users ears.

    3. If Siri or anybody else’s voice assistant started telling me ads before responding to my queries, it would be an unacceptable delay. I would never ever use it, and I think most people agree. No, this is an Android killer, and Google is stuck in a quandary: either develop their own voice assistant to keep up, but suffer ad losses; or stand on the sidelines while others run away with the phone business.

      1. Yes, Google will be in a Shakespearean quandary: To do or not to do. Both choices will affect its ads business. Google’s position is between a rock and a hard place. That’s why Andy Rubin is livid about Siri’s potential to disrupt Google’s money tree.

  2. Give the consumer a better way that he loves using and the consumer will buy your products.

    Siri is great. I and many other people have been EXTREMELY unhappy with search results on Google that have no relevant items on the first page of hits and all too often have dates on them that go back 5-6 years.

    Google is so “2000”.

    1. What kind of company releases beta software on final release software? A rotten apple, that’s what kind. The iPhone 4S with its tiny screen and outdated hardware is stuck in the 20th century. Windows 6 had a better OS.

        1. Why is gee a troll? Because he doesn’t sign praises to apple? I love my Mac and apple…. But the iPhone is stale, the gs2 is truly amazing…

      1. The main reason it is beta is because they plan on adding support for more languages….btw Siri has been working very well for me. “The iPhone 4S with its tiny screen and outdated hardware is stuck in the 20th century. Windows 6 had a better OS.”….and that’s why it’s been such a failure….Apple is having a really hard time trying to get anyone to buy one. Oh wait, its only the best selling smartphone in the world.

      2. Anyone who says WinMob6 was a better OS is either trolling or spectacularly retarded when it comes to recognising what constitutes a good OS. Having used WinMob and Symbian on so-called ‘smartphones’ before I bought an iPhone 3G, and having used OS 9 and OS X, as well as Windows when forced to, I actually know what a good, intuitive OS is, and WinMob 6 blows goats.
        Whereas iOS is clear and easy enough for the 82yo mother of a friend of mine to pick up instantly, having never used anything more than the most basic of cellphones before. You, sir, are a halfwit.

  3. Siri’s Achilles’ heel is its network dependency, and to a centralized service. Remember the Blackberry outage a week or two ago? Well, MDN reported sporadic Siri outage yesterday, and some MDN comments already said they had become dependent on Siri.

    Apple gets a pass for now because Siri is beta, but a user interface that absolutely requires access to a remote service, even for local device actions (timer, alarm, reminders, notes, appointments, call contacts, play music, etc) is a ticking time bomb. If people get so hopelessly dependent on Siri, and then it hiccups for a significant period, it will cost Apple significant credibility, just as it did RIM.

    This is not to say Apple shouldn’t be trying this and pushing the boundaries, or that Siri is bad, but their track record with online services has been spotty (.Mac, mobileme), so I do hope that Apple finds a way to reduce the network dependency.

    1. That’s not “the network”. It’s RIM’s servers. And all significant players are centralized. Google has their servers. Amazon has theirs. And now Apple has theirs. If the server farm works well, no problem.

      1. That’s kind of my point. It’s not a matter of IF the server farm at least hiccups, but WHEN and HOW LONG the service disruption is for.

        And when service initially degrades, you can also count on the service immediately being hammered after word gets out on social media, as people check and see that, yes, it is in fact slow or offline.

        My point is just that Siri’s inability to operate offline right now is an issue that can and will bite them. Maybe Apple’s waiting to see how popular Siri is before committing dedicated voice-processing chips onto iOS, I don’t know.

    2. I agree completely. This article is unfortunately timed, as Siri is still out for me today. I was frustrated this afternoon not being able to tell my phone to make a call while in my car. I ended up turning Siri off so that I could at least use Voice Control in the meantime. It is silly for Apple to not fall back on the phone’s local voice controls by default when the network is down or out of range. Or just because local things shouldn’t need to have to go over the network.
      It was also annoying getting a warning that Apple would delete my Siri information from their servers when I disabled it temporarily.

      1. I agree. There’s no reason that any service using data on the iPhone itself (making a voice call, scheduling a reminder, viewing the calendar, etc.) shouldn’t work when network service is unavailable. There’s no need for network service when I’m trying to call my wife, who is in my Contacts and Favorites.

    3. I think THAT is Siri’s big advantage, and something that will distinguish iOS over Android (and Windows Phone) for many years. Except for RIM, all of players competing against Apple separate hardware development from software development. Integration of software and hardware (and therefore user experience) will always be better with Apple’s products.

      But NOW, they have to also integrate a “centralized service” to provide artificial intelligence capabilities. Well, FIRST they have to CREATE that service, THEN integrate it into an already fragmented user experience.

      If Apple stands still for the next two years, maybe (?) Google (and Microsoft) can catch up, but Apple will keep moving forward… Siri will keep getting better and “smarter.” And it’s made possible because Siri *IS* a centralized service that Apple controls, along with software and hardware development.

        1. The big ass table isn’t vaporware. I used one in vegas!

          If u place it on its side on a forklift and raise it up a good 4 feet it really makes the ipad feel small and so “yesterday”.

    4. Exactly. I experienced it, yet again. It even screwed with web browsing because I accidentally activated Siri. My iPhone was “locked up” in “making a connection”. I turned that Bitch off. I don’t have any use for it. It’s like FaceTime. Cool bragging rights with no real desire to use it.

  4. What Koolaid have you been drinking? Siri is just another train wreck by the rotten apple company. It’s so buggy Terminix has been called. Meanwhile Google voice command continues to work without a hitch. But don’t tell the rotten apple fanboys – their brains have zombie rot and telling them the truth would put them into shock.

    1. Google Voice and Siri are very different. And since you seem to hate Apple and the iPhone so much, feel free to buy your Droid RAZR and enjoy it somewhere else.

      P.S. Really glad Motorola came up with a name for its copycat phone for which it pays Lucasfilm a royalty JUST FOR THE DROID NAME and then had to recycle its long gone, last successful phone, the RAZR, from the dustbin. Very creative.

    2. Google’s voice command does work fine. But it’s been out over two years now. What can you do with it now that you couldn’t do with it two years ago? Absolutely nothing.

      Eric Schmidt even acknowledges Siri is a breakthrough, but Google doesn’t know what to do with their own version.

      Just another Google beta. You better hope it doesn’t end up in the same place as Buzz, Wave and +.

  5. Frankly I’m not feeling the love for Siri yet. Both my wife and I have tried many different searches and commands with Siri, and she often doesn’t hear very well, misstating what we asked. The result, of course, is the wrong answer or that Siri can’t do what we ask. And my wife and kids laughing at what Siri repeats back as my command (and no, I don’t slur, drink, have a strong accent, etc.).

    Siri also doesn’t work over Bluetooth (at least not well). It simply doesn’t hear anything. My iPhone automatically connects to my car when I start it. If I want to use Siri, I have to go through Settings and turn off Bluetooth, which then means I can’t use my car’s mic and speakers for a phone call.

    I’m sure Apple is working on these problems, but the limitations restrict what Siri could do for me and really reduce its usefulness.

  6. Siri probably won’t affect desktop search much, if at all.

    It will increasingly have an effect on mobile search, and mobile searcyh is something GOOG is very interested in (why they got Android as a defensive play against MSFT).

    Considering the outsized share of mobile search and surfing done from iOS devices, GOOG has to look at Siri with a growing sense of alarm — just from a search perspective, let alone Siri being yet another feature that sets iOS devices apart from anything GOOG and Samsung could deliver.

    As AAPL adds more and more databases, services and languages, the searches from iOS devices thru Google will degrade.

    The question is — will the mobile search market expand so much that it’s a land-grab for years to come, and GOOG and AAPL and BING will all grow regardless (some more than others, of course) – ?

    That is, GOOG could still grow regardless of Siri, just not as much as they would have projected back in Sept (before the Siri announcement).

  7. Siri is beta, don’t forget that. It will get better in time. I strongly believe that Apple released Siri as beta because there hasn’t been anything else like it and Siri needs to learn (just like Skynet) in order to function well enough to be out of beta and then take over the world.

    Apple isn’t Google where everything stays beta.

    Also, Siri may suffer depending on carrier ability, network availability but just like OpenMinde said above, “Network will get better overtime. And backend system will get better overtime. Just like CPU/Smartphone get more power overtime.”

    Also, Apple will force providers, networks and others to enhance their service to meet the new demands of technology.

    Yes, I noticed the little trolls on this tread. Sounds like annoying children whining, these trolls.

  8. This article is nonsense. Siri still relies on Google’s backend to do the searches, regardless of how the search command is typed into a field, or spoken. Siri still essentially takes dictation of your spoken word of what to search for, then it puts this into a field, then searches the net.

  9. In the practical world Siri and FaceTime mean nothing. Apple’s claim to fame is media. Music, Movies, Television, and Internet. They package all that very well. Siri is just bragging rights. Like the thinnest laptop computer. It’s cool. It sets them apart in marketing. It’s flashy lights. It’s a red dress.

    Ever consider where Apple would be without the music or cinema industry? They’d still just be catering to high school English teachers.

  10. For some things Siri will save time and get to the answer quick. Other times seeing the Google results for yourself and picking and choosing which are what your looking for will be more appropriate. Both will thrive I predict.

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