Answering questions posed by the U.S. Senate antitrust
subcommittee, Google chairman Eric Schmidt called the personal
voice assistant in the iPhone 4S, named Siri, a "significant
development" in the search market. Schmidt went so far as to say
that Siri represents a threat to Google's search business, which is
the company's bread and butter.
He could be right. Here's why.
I've been using Google's voice-assisted search tool for years on
iPhones and Android smartphones. It's a great tool when you don't
want to (or can't) take the time to peck out search queries on a
touchscreen. It's not 100 percent accurate, but it works well
enough most of the time that I prefer it to any other search
method.
That is, until Siri came along.
With the iPhone 4S, I pose all questions to Siri (when it's
working). Is Siri a better search tool? Does it provide better
results? Is it faster? Not necessarily, but it's a hell of a lot
more entertaining. And if Siri doesn't succeed on the first try,
you have the pleasure of awaiting its sassy response. This is
clearly a case where personality actually counts for something.
"Even in the few weeks since the [previous] hearing, Apple has
launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri,
its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into
the iPhone 4S," he wrote, reports AppleInsider.
Of course, Schmidt's motivation for calling Siri a competitive
threat isn't because he's actually scared of Siri's impact on
Google's search business. No, he's trying to allay the Senate's
concerns that Google is a monopolistic entity that needs to be
regulated. Schmidt is going to call up every competitor he can
think of to shore up Google's defense.
"Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to
anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing
information," Schmidt noted. "Apple's Siri is a significant
development--a voice-activated means of accessing answers through
iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search."
Innovative? Yes. Competitive? Yes. A real, immediate threat to
Google's core business? Well...
Siri will not impact Google's position in the search market
anytime soon. Despite the entertainment value in Siri's search
powers, it's not going to dislodge Google's dominant position in
the search market, at least, not for a while. While iPhone 4S users
may skip Google search on their iPhones, that's one very small
segment of users and doesn't account for Google's desktop search
business, which is huge.
Google owns 65 percent of the U.S. search market, 94 percent of
the European search market, and 97 percent of the smartphone search
market (thanks in no small part to the raging success of its
Android smartphone platform).
Siri might have an impact eventually, if Apple brings it out of
beta and expands it to more than a single device. For the time
being, however, Schmidt's statements ring a bit false.
Source:
InformationWeek USA