Google see’s Apple’s voice-activated assistant Siri as a serious threat, Eric Schmidt, the company’s chairman has admitted
In a statement to the US Senate antitrust subcommittee, Neowin.net reports Schmidt said Siri is: ‘a significant development’ in search, potentially threatening Google’s core business.
Schumidt also commented: “Even in the few weeks since the 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 also admitted to being wrong with his previous statement where he denied Apple was a threat. ‘”My statement was clearly wrong,” he said. “Apple’s Siri is a significant development—a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search.”
He also denied Google was as dominant:“Google has many competitors that are not general search engines, including specialised search engines, social networks, and mobile apps… Inferring that Google is in any way ‘dominant’ in search would be incorrect.”
Of course, it’s hardly surprising Schmidt would say this and draw attention to Apple to an antitrust subcommittee, especially considering Google’s smartphone platform Android has a 43.7% market share, dominat the mobile phone space.
However, it’s clear Google does view Siri as a threat. Since the first iPhone launched, Google has been the native search engine. However by using Siri, Apple iPhone 4S users can bypass the search engine and be presented with Apple’s own search results. Although much of this is business based search, which has yet to land in the UK yet.
Via: App Insider Via: Pocket-Lint
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