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Is Siri Smarter Than Google?
storagedude writes "Google could go the way of the dodo if ultra intelligent electronic agents (UIEA) make their way into the mainstream, according to technology prognosticator Daniel Burrus. Siri is just the first example of how a UIEA could end search as we know it. By leveraging the cloud and supercomputing capabilities, Siri uses natural language search to circumvent the entire Google process. If Burrus is right, we'll no longer have to wade through '30,000,000 returns in .0013 milliseconds' of irrelevant search results."
Whenever I ask Siri a question, she always refers me to a google search.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
This assumes voice recognition becomes leaps and bounds better than it is right now. I've cursed at Siri more than I've asked it questions. Maybe it's my Midwest accent.
At least thats been my experience so far.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I don't follow much of the esoteric details (and don't give a yayhoo about speed) but when I enter a term in a search engine, i.e. "RF video combiners," I'd like some return of technical documents and (what would be really nice) individual techies with their own webpage showing how to implement and what pitfalls to avoid. Instead I get a bunch of sales/marketing aggregates, tech discussions that are really disguised sales/marketing crap, ebay listings, go-get-bids, sorority-sluts, etc.
mfwright@batnet.com
or has Google's search gotten crappier lately?
I was trying to find a purchase or at least pre-order page for a specific laptop model. Top search result on Google was an Amazon link - an Amazon search page for that exact model, showing 0 results followed by the regular "you may also be interested in" links (most of which weren't even tangentially related to what I was looking for).
That's not all - get this. Google noted that it was recommending this because I had already visited the page
Really, Google? Really? You track my every move, scour the entire Internet for information, and then you use it to give me a result that is not only wrong, but that you know I've already found (and found useless)? Really?
I mean, come on, Google. "Turning to the Dark Side" is supposed to at least make you more effective (bad guys always win for at least the first three acts), not make you worse.
I've heard complaints that Suri is getting dumber over time. That for some people it used to return the results that they wanted, but now that it is building up its database of what (I'm guessing) a majority of people mean when they ask a question, that at least a minority of users no longer get the results they used to receive for the same query. If Suri gets overwhelmed by queries that can be considered in pop-culture terms to mean something other than their strict meanings, she could quickly become both useless and frustrating.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Depends on what you ask. But that's a good point.
Siri "circumvents" Google search for certain things. "Find me a seafood restaurant" will go to Yelp, which has reviews and such. "How many grams in an ounce" will go to Wolfram-Alpha. Otherwise, it sticks it in a query and ships it off to Google.
Needless to say, Google isn't sitting still. "Find me a seafood restaurant" in Google will also provide me a list of local restaurants with reviews, much like Yelp does. Arguably, Google's ratings may be better because they are collected from a broad spectrum of sources (user reviews from various review sites, individual bloggers, professional reviews) versus whoever Apple decided to sign a deal with. Speaking of which, you have to consider what kind of deals are being done in the background. Woz recently pointed out something I found a bit disturbing:
So where Siri used to give answers, Siri now gives advertising.