Siri – A Threat To Google?
0By Tefo Mohapi
The iPhone 4S hasn’t hit the stores in Africa yet, and even though the numbers show that the iPhone doesn’t hold a significant market share in Africa when it comes to smart phones – I couldn’t help but wonder the impact of Siri (for more info go to Apple’s Siri Page ) on Google’s search business.
Image courtesy of www.apple.com
Siri in a nutshell, allows you to ask of it anything, and using various algorithms and the Internet connection gives you the answers you need and in some cases connects a call for you or even provides you with directions to the required location. This in effect, cuts out the need to go to Google and search for anything. Yes, Google has what they call Google Voice Actions (GVA) yet this doesn’t use free flowing natural language like Siri does. Also, for us on the African continent the question will be about Siri’s support of our indigenous languages (Google search has African language support & translation) as well as Siri’s understanding of our accents. We will have to wait until it hits our shores.
In the mean time, read more (at www.techcrunch.com) about this intriguing subject as “Gary Morgenthaler Explains Exactly How Siri Will Eat Google’s Lunch”.
