Maybe it’s just a bit of false modesty, but chairman Eric Schmidt told a US Senate subcommittee recently that he believes Apple’s Siri technology poses a threat to Google in the search market.
NeoWin first unearthed Schmidt’s statements on Siri, which were taken from a response to questions originally posed during a Senate subcommittee hearing earlier this fall. The most interesting bit is Schmidt’s willingness to admit they had overestimated the technology.
As I noted this past June, my statement last September was clearly wrong. The Internet is dynamic and has changed significantly. The importance of social networking to consumers’ online experience has changed remarkably-even over the past year. Consumers are looking for answers when they conduct searches online, and social search has become a serious competitor in helping people find those answers online. Similarly, Apple’s Siri is a significant development — a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search. The tech industry is one of the most competitive and dynamic spaces in the entire economy, with small companies as well as larger companies competing hard against each other in lots of areas. Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information. We compete against a broader array of companies than most people realise, including general search engines.
But like AppleInsider points out, one must take this with a grain of salt. Schmidt was responding to questions posed during an antitrust hearing, and in addition to playing up the viability of Siri as a search engine, he also skewed statistics to make it sound like the iPhone had a higher marketshare than Android handsets. But maybe he isn’t. Are the search capabilities of Siri, who can interpret conversational speech, a glimpse at the future of the technology? [Google via NeoWin via AppleInsider]
Simmo
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 7:52 AMBut Siri is no search engine, right? It merely interprets the speech and hands over the actual search to the big boys.
Sean
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 8:52 AMI think you meant underestimated.
Ash
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 9:12 AMIf Google are smart, they would buy out Voice Actions (now called Jeannie I think) and build on that. They keep trying to push their own Voice Search tool which really really sucks. Yes Google should be afraid, but not that much. The world still heavily relies on Google as a web based format, rather than voice input.
Greg
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 10:03 AMWhat do the search providers that Siri hooks into get out of the relationship? If Siri doesn’t serve you adds with your search results and so the mechanism that pay’s for your search is broken.
People may not immediately care that they don’t see the adds with their search results but free services have to be paid for somehow.
Ozoneocean
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 1:44 PMYup. Apple will either be paying something, or if they aren’t they’ll have to eventually or get into the search business themselves.
DarkAura
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 10:23 AM. This comment has been deemed inappropriate and has been deleted.
Steve
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 4:27 PMThe source comes from AppleInsider. I know fanboys are crazy, but I thought quote-mining was limited to Creationists? I don’t get any sense of fear from this text at all. Adrian Covert should learn how to write an appropriate headline.
Ozoneocean
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 1:42 PMYeah, he’s not concerned- It’s an antitrust hearing, his purpose there is to make Google look as less like a monopoly as he possibly can, talking up any possible competitors and alternatives can only help him, not show anything about what he actually fears or concerns him.