Loading...The tech world’s most favorite former partners-turned-enemy couples Apple and Google are once again going at it, and once again, Google will probably come out with the upper hand. In a move that probably shouldn’t really be all that surprising, Google is introducing a voice assistant system much like Apple’s Siri to iOS. This is a big step for Google, but not really in the direction of mending any ties between the former Google Maps partner.
A reminder might not be necessary, but there was a time a while back when Google and Apple were partners while Google Maps existed on iOS. After things turned a little sour, the two broke their partnership, and Apple went on to make Apple Maps. We all pretty much know how that all turned out.
Apple has been striking out quite a bit lately. With two big executives leaving their position, and then continued trouble between the company and England, some are losing their hope in the company. It’s not totally certainly where they could be after Voice Search has been fully assessed for iOS.
But onto today, where Google Voice Search will now be available for iOS. Since the introduction at the beginning of this week, the response from critics has generally been one in favor of Google, which really comes as no surprise. You also might remember the lack of positive response that came about as a result of Siri, which experience quite a lot of problems accurately responding to people’s queries.
Mel Martin of the website Tuaw seemed to be impressed with Google Voice Search, saying that the speed in which it performs completely outdoes the performance of Siri. According to Martin, as your query is being spoken, you can see Voice Search react to it immediately. Siri’s response couldn’t quite live up to this type of gratification.
Relevancy is also a big key factor in the distinguishing of the two systems, which is something that really shouldn’t have to be looked at in the first place. When you ask the program what you’re looking for, anything but would easily lead to a big thumbs down. Unfortunately in the case of Siri, this was often the case. Information would be given that had some relevance to what you ask, but then you’d probably get a whole lot more.
Mark Wilson of Fast Co. Design pointed out this very happening, but for the sake of fairness, Google’s system had some flaws as well. Of these include a slight lack of comprehensive information. When Wilson asked about a movie being played, the locations were given but no times were.
It might seem that there is still going to be some time before either Google or Apple really have the voice assistant thing really figured out. This is the type of technology that we could only have dreamed of in something like the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey” (hopefully they don’t create anything as evil as HAL 9000 though.