After Apple bought Siri a few years ago, many assumed it was the company's first step in a battle against Google's search business. It was a good assumption.
But at All Things D's D8 conference in 2010, Steve Jobs tried to put that speculation to rest by saying Apple had slightly different plans for Siri.
"[It's] not a search company. They're an AI company. We have no plans to go into the search business. We don't care about it. Other people do it well," Jobs told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg.
Jobs was mostly right. Siri launched on the iPhone 4S in October as more of an intelligent virtual assistant than a searching tool. Siri is designed to set reminders, send text messages, make appointments, etc. Search is kind of part of Siri, but it relies heavily on Wolfram Alpha, a "knowledge engine" that usually does a great job at answering oddball questions like "What's the GDP of Greece?" but not so great at pulling up queries normal humans need.
That's why I was so excited when Google announced Google Now, a search-centric, voice-powered digital assistant for the upcoming version of Android called Jelly Bean.
I've been using Jelly Bean on a Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 for the last few days. And I can say Google Now is a lot more impressive than Siri. Google Now fills in all the gaps left by Siri, and does pretty much everything else a whole lot better. This is how search should work on mobile devices.
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