Google and Apple are leaving no stones unturned to make sure that the smartphone will be smarter in the near future. And a key factor in gauging the how smart is the smartphone is the voice-controlled personal assistant.
Both Apple and Google are injecting hundreds of millions of dollars in funds to develop their respective personal assistant software - Siri and Google Now. Which means, in the future you'll be able to tell Siri/Google Now to book a seat on a flight or fix an appointment with your doctor, and not just engage the personal assistant in rudimentary conversations to kill time.
In other words, it will be a clash of tech titans in terms of voice-controlled assistants. Both Google and Apple want to make sure that the personal assistant will understand clearly what the humans are saying, then search for the best answers to their queries, and filter the choices. In fact, both the companies have created teams to achieve these goals.
While Google and Apple are making giant strides, the former might have an edge as it already has a powerful search engine with an algorithm in place determining the best search results. Google envisions a Google Now that will mimic the mainframe of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise. Yes, perhaps it cannot teleport users anywhere, but Google is determined in revolutionizing how users interact with their mobile devices.
"The reason we feel pretty good in terms of competition is because what we're seeing and everything we're building today is built on top of the foundation of core web search rankings," said Google engineering director Scott Huffman. "It does feel like a bit of a race. For us the race part often has a lot to do with talent, a little more than finding a start-up with a magic idea that we have to buy before anyone else. It's more about the engineering talent in this being in a lot of demand."
Huffman might be hinting at how Apple might utilize the technology of Topsy acquired, which Apple for $200 million. The latter has the technology that can help Apple determine trends and patterns on Twitter, something that can help Siri understand queries better.
Whether Google Now will edge out Siri in the race or whether Siri will emerge tops, is anybody's guess but, one thing is certain - both companies know that they cannot just rely on machines, and human factor will be crucial in determining sensible answers to certain queries.
