Siri is changing what it means to be mobile. The more we’re on the move, the more ridiculous it seems to have to stop and type on a tiny, clumsy keyboard to look something up or make an appointment. Now, if you have an iPhone 4S, you can just tell Siri what you need.

Tell Siri you want Italian food, and Siri will tell you where to get it along with restaurant ratings. Tell Siri you need to hide a body, and Siri will give you a list of reservoirs, mines, dumps, and swamps (really).

Siri, for the first time, makes voice a viable user interface. Earlier technologies were awkward, imprecise, and single task oriented. Siri is smart. It learns your habits and can answer questions based on context. It can distill what you want out of your natural speech, and the more you use it, the better it gets at understanding you and your user trends. Siri will update your calendar, transcribe and send email, check the weather, find a bookshop, make a call, or look up talking points on Wikipedia. It’ll even talk to you and read your messages to you.

Everyone expected Apple to get into the search game, but no one thought it would be like this. Apple slyly jumped into search under the guise of a voice activated assistant. Sneaky. We think Siri and its kind will forever change the way we search. It also means that Google won’t always be the gatekeeper since Siri also uses local and user-review sites like Yelp.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, went so far as to say Siri could pose a competitive threat to Google. Why? Because when you ask Siri to look up that seafood place at the intersection of Main and William, you don’t need to see a Google ad for Red Lobster. Siri bypasses user interaction with Google, which includes bypassing Google’s ads. But remember that we’re talking about Google here. Google’s been the reigning champ in search for a long time, and competition will only push them to do what they do best: innovate. Google, however, may be obliged to share a piece of the pie.

So how is the future looking now that Siri is in the picture? Search will start to change rapidly. Not only is Apple building up an immense amount of data on how people use Siri and how they can improve it, but competitors have been given a spur in the side. Search is about to change in two big ways: this new way to interact with our machines will breathe a second wind into the already powerful trend toward mobile.  With a lot more of the process happening behind the scenes, Apple and Google will need to focus on both online and offline user experience to survive, which is good for us.

Siri is still technically in beta and the voice recognition can trip up on accents. The integration and interaction with databases and other iPhone applications make talking to Siri a meaningful exchange. And on a less technical note, Siri has personality.

Siri’s personality is probably what, at least in part, has fueled the rumors of the name. Siri was created by Dag Kittlaus, a Norwegian man who co-founded Siri in 2007 and got a fateful call from Steve Jobs last year with an offer to buy. While Siri, in Norwegian, means “beautiful and victorious,” there were rumors that Kittlaus named his company for Siri Kalvig, a business woman and famous meteorologist with whom he worked at Telenor. This caused some to theorize a co-worker crush. According to Kittlaus, however, he wanted to name his daughter Siri, but he had a son, so the name went to his company. And now, Siri may become a household name.