
Google Chairman tells US senators Apple's Siri could pose 'competitive threat' - evo_9
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/11/05/google_chairman_eric_tells_us_senators_apples_siri_could_pose_competitive_threat.html
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orijing
That's a blatant lie.

In light of the recent monopoly hearings in the Senate, Mr. Schmidt is clearly
trying to persuade Senators that Google is weak and vulnerable. But Google
published findings that show that in natural language processing, it's really
the quantity [1] that determines quality. Note in particular the discussion of
"stupid backoff" (a smoothing/interpolation technique), which relies on the
raw quantity of data. Who has a copy of the Internet's treasure-trove of text
in its data centers?

Ultimately, NLP is something that's Google's to win if it truly desired. I'm
not sure what powers Siri directly, but large data is Google's answer, and
it's much more effective than Mr. Schmidt would make you believe.

[1] Large Language Models in Machine Translation:
<http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/D/D07/D07-1090.pdf>

~~~
jerrya
I find it interesting that at this moment, your comment seems to be the most
highly rated one, whereas my
post,(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3201862>) which makes much the same
point using a famous literary metaphor, is currently at -2 :)

~~~
CamperBob
Keep in mind that _Song of the South_ was consigned to the memory hole by
Disney at least 20 years ago, if not more. I'd be surprised if anyone under 30
even gets that reference, or sees how it might describe Google's attitude.

~~~
pohl
It would be nice if the Uncle Remus cycle of stories only existed in that
movie and could be so easily removed from cultural circulation.

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Zak
It's important to note that Google has an incentive in this case to make it
look like there is significant competition; the senators were investigating
whether Google is a monopoly.

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treelovinhippie
Pfft, all Google need to do is update Google Voice search on Android to more-
or-less clone Siri functionality. Or alternatively they could integrate Siri
functionality directly into Google.com search as a kind of contextual search
feature where Google has a conversation with you to refine your search.

The winner in this game won't necessarily be the one with the best features,
but the one with the most input/searches. i.e. more people use Google voice
than do Siri, and so Google has more existing and incoming data to help
improve the algorithm to make the "perfect" Siri.

~~~
Kylekramer
I agree Siri isn't a threat for Google in terms of market share or features
(Google beats Apple on their own game here, they own the whole stack of
data/speech to text tech while Apple is cobbling together everything from
numerous sources). I think it is clear Schmidt is just trying to downplay
Google's dominance here, and highly doubt he is really afraid of Siri. But
Siri can be dangerous to Google, because if personal assistant style search
becomes the standard, it is going to be hard to sell ads. Currently, it is no
big deal if you throw a few ads on the top or the side of a search page. In a
Siri-like conversation, though, it is a whole new ballgame. It is more
personal and direct, so it would be extremely off-putting to be pushed
products by your "assistant".

I have my doubts about Siri taking off, but if it does, Google may have a
problem on its hands.

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paul7986
Why you have doubts? Just look at how many articles are written about Siri in
a daily basis. Most recent being bloggers writing about siri going down.

For me I use Siri everyday as it's a quicker way to accomplish many things
once accomplished thru hunting and pecking to say do a google search. Obce you
get to google you then have to type your query and then click to go website to
read info. Siri you just ask her a question and she pulls up the info taking a
five step process and turning into a 2 step process.

Any tech that simplifies and makes things easier usually becomes the norm.

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Xlythe
Computers have had microphones as a standard for years. Typing has clearly won
over voice for search on desktops and laptops. On handheld devices, where the
keyboard isn't as easy to type on, voice might win out. Might. You
broadcasting what you're searching for every time you speak to search and you
end up attracting people's attention.

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jerrya
_Google Chairman tells US senators Apple's Siri could pose 'competitive
threat'_

Br'er Rabbit pleads, "but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-
patch

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nickand
This is almost an insult to Apple. I read it as "Siri is so much not a threat
that all the praise in the world will not help it." I also tend to agree. If
you talk to your phone then you want it to talk back. Currently you input
voice and then get back visual results. If you are in a voice only situation
then you want to keep it in that context. If If I have the bandwidth to look
at a screen and interface then I have the bandwidth to input a more specific
search in the first place. Siri is a toy and Google is giving them lip
service.

~~~
falling
Uh? Have you seen any demo videos? The fact that it talks back to you and can
interact only by voice is pretty much the only feature that sets Siri apart
from previous voice control solutions.

You could argue that it's not complete yet, but they are doing exactly what
you describe.

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mkramlich
Google has the best combination of money, people and data (and control over
Android) to make any potential Siri-killer. If anybody could do it, it'd be
them.

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artursapek
Doesn't Siri, by default, USE Google to search for queries given to it? I've
read that Google is just upset that they are cut out of the equation which
results in their ads not being shown. However in this situation with Apple it
seems like Google has the leverage so I would agree with other commenters that
Schmidt seems to be trying to downplay Google's power to Congress.

