Siri-ous Competition

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 vocal interface 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. Siri’s method of retrieving information from local and user-review sites like Yelp also means that Google won’t always be the gatekeeper.

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? Not only is Apple building up an immense amount of data on how people use Siri, but competitors have been given a spur in the side. This new way to interact with our machines will complement the already powerful trend toward mobile. Apple and Google will need to focus on how the online and offline user experiences interact, which is good for all of us.