

Head To Head: Siri Vs. Google Voice Actions - dell9000
http://searchengineland.com/head-to-head-siri-vs-google-voice-actions-96998

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YooLi
What about asking Google Voice Actions to send a text message, read your
messages, when the birthday of a contact is, set a timer for you, remind you
of something when you leave home, play a track, etc. They compared only
questions Google VA could handle and left out 90% of what makes Siri awesome.

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tadfisher
You can send text messages, set alarms, and play music via Voice Actions, but
it's not as polished as the Siri experience. I can't get it to read emails or
SMS for me, and geofencing is nonexistent.

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notatoad
using 2.3.4, i can't _really_ play music. i can say "play the beatles" and it
will offer to search youtube for the beatles, but it won't search the music on
my phone.

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Kylekramer
You got to say "listen to [song/artist/album]". Which, of course, shows one
place Siri's got the advantage currently, but I am sure Google is working on
that now.

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notatoad
it still won't play my music. i get "complete action with [youtube|subsonic]",
but no option to actually play the music on my phone, using the stock music
player.

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tensor
I think it worth pointing out that Siri's achievements beyond google should be
credited to the startup that created it. It's popular and fun to give Apple
all the credit, and they made a great purchase.

But this is not a story about Apple the innovator. This is a story about a
startup that won big. That they were bought by Apple and integrated instead of
remaining a strong new company is more a reflection on the current state of
the software business than anything else.

All credit to the Siri team and the projects that it is derived from. The
funding for this includes government (DARPA) as well as several academic
institutes:

 _"Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Massachusetts, the University
of Rochester, the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Oregon State
University, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University, as
well as from SRI."_

References:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_stealth_startu...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_stealth_startup_siric.php)

<https://pal.sri.com/Plone/framework>

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po
Siri's personality does one thing Google Voice Actions doesn't: develop an
emotional connection with the user. I fully expect Siri to impact the number
of people switching to Android. It would be less like switching phones and
more like firing you personal assistant.

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akmiller
I guess it depends on what type of person you are. I'd rather not pretend to
be having a real conversation with an electronic device and would rather give
simple voice commands when needed.

That being said the more conversational style, with the emotional connection
as you put it, could easily be added into the Google Voice actions as well I'm
sure.

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nilchameleons
It's been my experience that Siri responds equally well to curt commands as to
colloquial phrases, which is how voice commands should be (and how voice
commands to real assistants work, somewhat.)

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millions
Has anybody seen a comparison of actual speech-to-text capabilities,
preferably done in a proper manner (using speech recordings of different
accents, etc)?

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nooneelse
> You just say "search the web for..." and Siri initiates a Google search.

How disappointingly verbose. Does Siri not know that "google" is a verb?

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siglesias
It does.

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nooneelse
Cool. Thanks for checking. It would have been a silly omission had it not. I
guess the author is the needlessly wordy one.

