Google Search App Brings Siri-Competitor to iPhone

Direct link in the OP doesn't work.

Anuba said:

It doesn't seem to matter how many countries their war chest could buy, they just don't want to invest in anything that doesn't bring in hard cash seconds later. For their services they just hook up with any 3rd party crap they can find. Yahoo weather, Yelp, TomTom, Gracenote... this from a company worth more than Microsoft and Google combined.

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I can't speak to the others, but I actually quite like Yelp! Do you consider Google to be a crap 3rd party service? I just think if Apple focused more on what they do well, and less on competing with Google at what it does well, they'd be very successful, and have compelling enough reasons for people to buy their hardware, which as most agree, is where they make most of their profits.

"Direct link" goes to AppShopper?

Oh, right. It's also owned by Arn.

Ads for this, ads for that, ads to other places where you can see more ads!

Now we know the reason for the management changes last week. Software failures compared to the competition.

Very bad news for apple, wish it were not true, but it is

Another Siri complaint: she talks way too much. It leads to delays in delivering content or executing commands.

Me: Text my sister
Siri: Ooookayyy, I can send a text to [Long full name, redacted] for yoouu. What would you like it to sayyy?
Me: Blah blah blah.
Siri: Okayyy. I updated your message (no *****, Siri). Would you like me to send it?
Me: Yes.
Siri: Okayy, I'll send it.

Why can't Siri just say something faster, i.e. "What would you like to say to your sister?" "OK, should I send the message?" "Message sent." Simple, fast, not long and drawn out. I'm not really interested in listening to my phone talk.

The correct answer to "When does daylight savings time end?" is "There is no such thing." And then it should offer "Daylight Saving Time" as the correct answer.

dlmart2 said:

I downloaded it, installed it and said 'Send a text to my wife I'll be home soon" and it tried to search the internet for it. I deleted it.

Clearly you people don't fully understand what Siri does if you think this is a competitor.

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You expected a third party app to be fully integrated with the system?
Sigh.
Yeah, you can't ask Google Search to text your wife, that's hardly the point. The competition occurs in areas where the functionality overlaps, such as asking for weather, directions, points of interest etc. Google's alternative is blazing fast and recognizes each word in real time. The searches also yield way better results than with Siri, where I live anyway.

I just dled this. I was pretty impressed lol. Siri time for some improvements.

I spent most of my day today with a visually impaired person to set up her iPhone 5 on Verizon in a rural mountain area. Access to texting and verbal commands has already changed her life in the first 5 minutes.

She was unable to activate replaying voicemails. She was unable to read the pdf Verizon sent her on using visually impaired resources.

I noted when working with her that there were several Apple interface errors when dealing with her verbal commands. I asked myself, being self-centered and all, how would that impact me? If I were in a car and hands free it would make the effort fail. If I were distracted by two other mission critical tasks in my science business and had only a verbal channel available in my brain, it would have crashed and burned.

The Google effort is interesting. The Apple effort is mission critical and in need of some sort of interface clarification.

I would rather control my TV DVR with verbal commands than waving my hands wildly ala wii, or switching rectangular buttons ala W8, or typing commands ala Linux/XP (DOS, CP/M).

Siri is the future. Tim should employ my visually impaired friend (and her clones) to make it so.

Rocketman

Needs fixin': I can hear a speakerphone call but not the commands on Siri and the phone call I am on. Put the change in settings.

Gotta give Google credit here. I asked it "Why is Mitt Romney such an *sshole" and it brought up a paid ad for his website, but also sites like "Why is MR such a phony" and "mittromneyisatool.com".

I tried the same question with Siri and it responded with "Now, now". LAME!

dacreativeguy said:

It still isn't conversational like Siri. With Siri, you can say "what is the weather here", and then "and how about New York", and it remembers the context. Google Now still requires distinct commands.

I'm guessing Apple will be able to solve their speed problems more quickly than Google can add AI, but we'll see. Good to have some competition to push the tech forward.

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thats an issue of iOS restriction tho, google now works great on my friends nexus and the voice is less annoying and more human too.

and i love some of those tasks of google now, its actually kinda creepy. it does so many things without even having to ask. wish there was a way to port it to the iphone

Girl: "Show me pictures of whales"
Background: "We'll be leaving in 5 minutes"
*iPhone shows whale pictures*
Girl: "Cool"

I lol'd

Regardless of the subjective opinions as to which is better on which platform under which conditions.... this is great development.

Those who don't think that this is a competitor to Siri, think outside of the Apple box. This type of feature might be what attracts someone to an Android device over an Apple device. Sure it can never replace Siri on an iDevice (Apple protected ecosystem), but it show cases the stuff that Google can offer.

You want Apple to be spooked by this improvement from Google. Competition breeds improvement and innovation.

I started out as a Android users and used Google Search/Voice extensively. It was one of the features I was sad to lose in the switch over to Apple, but was happy to regain with iPhone 4S and Siri. Siri put the pressure back on Google and they've upped the ante.

Technarchy said:

It works well but it isn't a Siri competitor. There is some overlap, but Siri does some things Google search does not.

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Yes, it is a Siri competitor. Obviously it cant to core-os stuff unless they are given the api details, but it's online queries seems to be miles ahead of Siri at the moment, which isn't surprising given they have the worlds largest database of information at their disposal.

Competition is a good thing you know

saud0488 said:

Better question is how many of those things does Siri actually do well, the first time you say it? Answer is 0.

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Perhaps you should learn to speak a bit more succinctly. A little diction goes a long way. Typically, Siri has no problem following my commands first time out.

As to the admittedly faster Google Search voice feature... the time difference, so far, has been offset by the time it takes me to find the app and open it. Google Search is not on my Home Page, nor will it be displacing any of the apps that currently reside there. At least, not in the foreseeable future.

Technarchy said:

It works well but it isn't a Siri competitor. There is some overlap, but Siri does some things Google search does not.

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You're right. It's not a Siri competitor. Because Siri doesn't even run on my iPhone 4.

Thanks, Google. Downloading it right now.

The speed in recognizing your speech as you speak it is impressive but the way it does it hinders the results.

It uses commonly searched terms to complete your request as you're still talking but because of this, it will ignore what you actually said in favor of a similarly sounding term.

Try this:

Speak: "Show me pictures of iPad mini"

Result: it searches for pictures of iPod mini.

I've tested this with multiple people with me here now and it always replaces iPad mini with iPod mini.

iPad and iPod may be one letter away from being the same word but they sound very different. No matter now much you stress the A in iPAAAD it will change it to iPod.

Nonetheless, Apple now has a target to beat. Instant speech recognition results is how SIRI should always have been.

LEXS1411 said:

Having read the comments here I went to the app store
to download Google Search and all I get is a blank white screen.
On both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 ANYONE else having this
problem.

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Yes, exact same problem.
Edit: It's back on again.

As an iPhone 4 owner I was disappointed when Apple chose not to put Siri on the iPhone 4. I just downloaded Google Search and so far it works really well. It answers quickly and mostly correctly. Is it better than Siri? Maybe not for an iPhone 4s or 5 user. Is it better than Siri for an iPhone 4 user? Without a doubt. Good work Google.

Apple needs to take notes on this one!

I love Siri integration but many times it will not connect and its nowhere as fast as this Google Search. It's just not.

Amazing app! Super fast with excellent results.

ipedro said:

The speed in recognizing your speech as you speak it is impressive but the way it does it hinders the results.

It uses commonly searched terms to complete your request as you're still talking but because of this, it will ignore what you actually said in favor of a similarly sounding term.

Try this:

Speak: "Show me pictures of iPad mini"

Result: it searches for pictures of iPod mini.

I've tested this with multiple people with me here now and it always replaces iPad mini with iPod mini.

iPad and iPod may be one letter away from being the same word but they sound very different. No matter now much you stress the A in iPAAAD it will change it to iPod.

Nonetheless, Apple now has a target to beat. Instant speech recognition results is how SIRI should always have been.

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I tried it and first result was iPod but after enunciating clearer, it brought up iPad mini.

Yes, it is impressive. Unfortunately my iPod Touch 4th gen isn't quite up to the job and the app crashes just after or during bringing me the search results.

But then my iPod isn't quite up to the job of handling iOS 6 at all (everything painfully slow, app store unusable, multiple crashes on other apps, etc...).

Still, I won't go on. Google voice search was great for the split-second it worked for me and especially fun as I have a non-siri device

NOV said:

Which is a bloody shame BTW...

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why because I didn't have to pay £529 for a feature I would not even use.

I am really impressed. The voice recognition is good and the results are instant.