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Wait, So Apple's Siri Won't Kill Google Search After All?

This article is more than 10 years old.

Just a few months ago, some folks were suggesting that Apple's voice assistant Siri would kill Google's search by offering a more natural way for people to find what they want online--without annoying ads, either.

Honestly, the notion sounded at best rather ahead of itself at the time. But now, it seems Google's search service--specifically aided by its just-announced Google Now, the voice-enabled personal search assistant that's part of the new version of the company's Android mobile operating system--has actually turned the tables on Siri. According to several people who have pitted the two services against each other, Google search smokes Siri.

Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, for one, compared the services on some 800 queries--Google text search vs. Siri's voice queries. He found that Google understood 100% of the queries (naturally, since they were typed in), while Siri understood up to 89%. Google provided accurate answers 86% of the time, while Siri replied accurately up to 68% of the time.

That actually sounds pretty good for Siri, given the difficulties of voice recognition. But Munster gave Google search accuracy a B+, while sticking Siri with a D, harsh as that seems.

Jon Rettinger at TechnoBuffalo did a side-by-side comparison of Apple's and Google's voice assistant services, literally. So as you can see in the video above, it's an even more direct comparison. Time after time in the video, Google's voice answer beats Siri's, and even sounds a bit more human. Rettinger concludes that it's an "entirely new ballgame" for Android in the voice assistant competition.

Finally, Steve Kovach at Business Insider found Google Now "a lot more impressive" than Siri, particularly in terms of response speed.

What's more, Google seems to be thinking even further ahead. Its Project Glass wearable computer, also introduced last week at Google's developer conference, could make finding answers online even more natural (at least if you don't mind looking like you're talking to yourself even more than you do with hands-free smartphones). That's a couple of years in the future, but a natural for voice interaction.

All that said, clearly Apple is improving Siri day by day. With all those iPhones out there, Siri not only will get a lot of use, but that use will in turn help Apple improve it further, as Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised. In addition, Google Now is available only with the latest Android version, and phone makers and Google have a poor record of keeping phones on the newest Android.

In other words, and you probably already knew this, competition remains fierce and neither company is going to kill the other--at least not in this particular field of endeavor. Expect both companies to continue battling to provide us with devices and services that will find us better and better answers.