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Apple Hires Former AltaVista and Amazon Search Exec to Run Siri Unit

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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple has hired William Stasior, a search veteran from Amazon and early search engine AltaVista, to run its Siri unit, according to a report from All Things D.

Stasior was previously in charge of Amazon's A9 unit, the company's worldwide search and search advertising division.
Stasior has an impressive pedigree (you can read his resume and see a really geeky binary image he posted of himself here). The MIT Ph.D. has taught here too and has done stints at Oracle, Netcentives and AltaVista. He came to Amazon in 2003 as its director of search and navigation.

He will now be in charge of Siri, which is Apple's famous voice-activated personal-assistant program. The tech giant acquired Siri in April of 2010 to garner a big stake in voice-activated search.
Click to expand...
Apple purchased Siri in April 2010 and launched Siri as a major component of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S in October 2011. However, two major Siri executives -- Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus have left the company in the past year.

The addition of Stasior, a search expert, to the Siri team could give a hint to where Apple plans to take the product in the future.

Article Link: Apple Hires Former AltaVista and Amazon Search Exec to Run Siri Unit
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/15/apple-hires-former-altavista-and-amazon-search-exec-to-run-siri-unit/
iGrip

iGrip

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,626
0
Clearly Apple plans to take down Google and capture all of their profits for itself. Couldn't happen soon enough.

Go Apple!
 
ipedro

ipedro

macrumors 603
Nov 30, 2004
6,233
8,503
Toronto, ON
Somewhere in Apple's labs, there's a team designing a search engine.

Apple is purging it's rivals Google and Samsung. A move from Google Maps was critical, albeit not a smooth transition as we saw. Replacing the search engine is the final step, hopefully with a better rollout.

Apple can't continue to rely on it's rivals for key parts of its OS.

Siri is the natural search engine replacement but in a way completely different than a traditional search engine. Ask it a question and it returns an answer, not a bunch of pages where you may or may not find the answer. Ask if for a bunch of pages on a topic and it'll give you the traditional search engine results.

Just as we heard about Apple buying up maps companies and hiring map employees 3 years ago, this is the canary in the coal mine for an Apple search engine built into Siri, maybe in iOS 8 or 9.

EDIT: I've elaborated on this in this post: How Siri will become a dominant search engine
 
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nagromme

nagromme

macrumors G5
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
"a really geeky binary image he posted of himself"

Not that geeky... it’s made with the <FONT> tag! :eek:
 
S

samcraig

macrumors P6
Jun 22, 2009
16,779
41,982
USA
ipedro said:
Somewhere in Apple's labs, there's a team designing a search engine.

Apple is purging it's rivals Google and Samsung. A move from Google Maps was critical, albeit not a smooth transition as we saw. Replacing the search engine is the final step, hopefully with a better rollout.

Apple can't continue to rely on it's rivals for key parts of its OS.

Siri is the natural search engine replacement but in a way completely different than a traditional search engine. Ask it a question and it returns an answer, not a bunch of pages where you may or may not find the answer. Ask if for a bunch of pages on a topic and it'll give you the traditional search engine results.

Just as we heard about Apple buying up maps companies and hiring map employees 3 years ago, this is the canary in the coal mine for an Apple search engine built into Siri, maybe in iOS 8 or 9.
Click to expand...

You know that Siri isn't really a search engine, right?
 
C

cdolan92

macrumors newbie
Nov 18, 2009
16
0
Is there an online service to make images like that?

There is no way he sat there and typed that out, changing all the font colors.

Anyone seen that before? I'd be interested in changing a photo or two of myself into that. Kind of like the big montage photos in sports arenas, or of old presidents!
 
wikus

wikus

macrumors 68000
Jun 1, 2011
1,795
2
Planet earth.
I always thought of Siri as nothing more than a novel gimmick. Is it really as poor as some of you guys have mentioned?
 
ipedro

ipedro

macrumors 603
Nov 30, 2004
6,233
8,503
Toronto, ON
samcraig said:
You know that Siri isn't really a search engine, right?
Click to expand...

It's the front end for one. Which is why Apple is hiring a search guy to run Siri.

Google.com isn't a search engine either. It's the way you interact with the engine that Google has on its servers.
 
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S

samcraig

macrumors P6
Jun 22, 2009
16,779
41,982
USA
cdolan92 said:
Is there an online service to make images like that?

There is no way he sat there and typed that out, changing all the font colors.

Anyone seen that before? I'd be interested in changing a photo or two of myself into that. Kind of like the big montage photos in sports arenas, or of old presidents!
Click to expand...

That's quickly done in photoshop as a mask. You can do it over any photo in seconds once that text layer is created the first time
 
C

cadillac1234

macrumors regular
Aug 20, 2010
144
0
I love Siri and I'm glad to see Apple is serious about improving it.

Voice has been a start-stop promise for years now. They've got the start of a nice foundation in Siri
 
L

leukotriene

macrumors regular
Aug 1, 2008
148
0
Do this: place your hand over the upper half of his head (cover the forehead) on your computer screen.

Tell me that is not Ashton Kutcher.
 
Shasterball

Shasterball

Suspended
Oct 19, 2007
1,177
750
MacRumors said:
The addition of Stasior, a search expert, to the Siri team could give a hint to where Apple plans to take the product in the future.
Click to expand...

How about you simply take it a place where it actually works more than 20% of the time in real world situations. Seriously, instead of adding functionality, let's get the "existing" one to work.
 
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