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Amazon Preparing to Take on Apple's Siri with Acquisition of Speech Recognition Firm?

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The Atlantic reports that a Securities and Exchange Commission filing reveals Amazon has quietly acquired voice recognition firm Yap, perhaps signaling intentions to take on Apple and Google in the market.
Though the acquisition was apparently completed in September, no public announcement has been made by either company. The filing does not mention Amazon by name, but Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub" that just so happens to be headquartered at 410 Terry Avenue in Seattle, Washington, an Amazon.com building.
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Yap had been working on a beta service for converting voicemail messages to text, but reportedly possesses a significant amount of intellectual property underlying speech recognition technology. The consumer voicemail transcription service was discontinued on October 20th.

Google has of course integrated voice recognition in some of aspects of its business, including a Google Search app for iOS, for some time. And Apple has made a high-profile entrance into the market with Siri on the iPhone 4S, a new virtual personal assistant that accepts voice input for conducting various tasks or retrieving information.

Amazon, which has long competed with Apple in a number of digital download markets, is now pushing into the mobile hardware market as well, building upon its successful Kindle offerings with the introduction of its new Android-based Kindle Fire tablet. While considerably smaller and cheaper than Apple's iPad and focused on tying into Amazon's existing services, the Kindle Fire is being seen as one of the strongest potential competitors for the iPad to yet emerge.

Article Link: Amazon Preparing to Take on Apple's Siri with Acquisition of Speech Recognition Firm?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/09/amazon-preparing-to-take-on-apples-siri-with-acquisition-of-speech-recognition-firm/
It is so easy since it is just in the cloud. Who cares about the hardware performance when that is all done elsewhere? We have seen Siri on the 3GS. :rolleyes:
 
jav6454 said:
We will always have the blind fanboy saying its all done in the iPhone....
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I thought my voice recognition was done on my phone until I was disconnected. I have seen how massive Dragon NaturallySpeaking installations can get. You are not fitting that on a phone with currently available storage capacities.

Everyone is going to get this. You are just limited to your infrastructure and the software, not the capabilities of the hardware in field.
 
Somewhere in the its secret Puyallup research facility, a Microsoft engineer pounds his head on a console and cries out:

"Damn it. My photocopier is busted! Again!"
 
:)

Monkey see, monkey do. And all the Apple haters out there should rejoice, as the industry is moved forward. It's a win-win.
 
Competition is welcomed. Does anyone know where Google's voice software was acquired from, or was it developed in house?
 
**User**
Yap, can you please read the 345th word in this book?

**Yap**
Why?? Just read it yourself bro.
 
Cue the "Competition is good for us" people who think that statement adds to the discussion (and also don't think that statement through before posting it ;) )
 
With Amazon's massive cloud infrastructure, I doubt there will be many fake "hardware limitations" due to bandwidth limitations.

I look forward to having this tech on *all* my devices.

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cgc said:
Step 1. Copy Apple
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You mean copy Apple by BUYING tech from elsewhere? Who is Apple copying when they do that?
 
Voice Recognition

It's important to note that what makes Siri so different isn't the voice recognition, it's the AI behind it. Voice recognition is nothing new or particularly earth shattering and being able to parse voice input is only one small part of the equation. Amazon will still have a long way to go even with this acquisition...
 
Fire is not a mobile competitor. It doesn't have 3G. I just recently realized that an it really makes it kind of a weak product. Not much storage to download and take stuff with you, and no way to stream stuff on the road. Speech Recognition is done in the cloud, so it's kinda pointless on the device since there's no cloud available unless you're sitting at home or in a starbucks talking to your Kindle. I would doubt it has a mic. I know it's not for the kindle, but that's what these articles keep calling Amazon's foray into mobile devices, but it's the least mobile of ALL Amazon devices. It's meant to be used at home or at least somewhere with a wifi hotspot. MUSIC - I want in the car. MOVIES - I want a bigger screen or I want them in the CAR for the kids. Voice Recognition - I want with a MAP and in the CAR.

So I'm sure they'll have a future device in the works, but it won't be as competitive because it will have to be mobile and have a bigger, RETINA screen by then.
 
fxtech said:
You mean copy Apple by BUYING tech from elsewhere? Who is Apple copying when they do that?
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What don't people get...it's not that Apple was the first to have voice recognition or a personal digital assistant or whatever you want to label Siri as. The copying comes from the fact that none of these other leading tech visionaries thought it a good idea to have such a feature built into their phones/tablets until Apple did it and did it well.

Apple is never first, but they do get it right more often than not and when they do, all the others come out of the woodwork and act as though the features and products they are blatantly copying are somehow just natural progressions of technology that they were going to come out with anyway--they just happened to wait until Apple showed them the way.
 
Apple wasn't the first to have voice recognition. Why does everyone assume everyone else copies Apple maybe, Amazon was copying Android?
 
fxtech said:
With Amazon's massive cloud infrastructure, I doubt there will be many fake "hardware limitations" due to bandwidth limitations.

I look forward to having this tech on *all* my devices.

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You mean copy Apple by BUYING tech from elsewhere? Who is Apple copying when they do that?
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The fire doesn't have 3G so that's a pretty big hardware limitation when it comes to processing voice requests. Can't really access the cloud infrastructure without it unless you've got wifi.

Probably why Apple only has siri on the iPhone and not pads. Most pads don't have cellular and they're trying to keep a consistent experience. Probably next iPad will be marketed with siri being a reason to spend more on a 3g capable iPad.
 
guch20 said:
What don't people get...it's not that Apple was the first to have voice recognition or a personal digital assistant or whatever you want to label Siri as. The copying comes from the fact that none of these other leading tech visionaries thought it a good idea to have such a feature built into their phones/tablets until Apple did it and did it well.

Apple is never first, but they do get it right more often than not and when they do, all the others come out of the woodwork and act as though the features and products they are blatantly copying are somehow just natural progressions of technology that they were going to come out with anyway--they just happened to wait until Apple showed them the way.
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Yes yes yes thank you!!!!!!!
 
Amazon had the lead as music merchant but lost it to Apple.

Bad news for Amazon if it think it can beat Apple.
 
kjs862 said:
Competition is welcomed. Does anyone know where Google's voice software was acquired from, or was it developed in house?
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They have not acquired a voice recognition company, so it was done in house.

Between 2007 and 2010, Google created a large phoneme database from its now-shuttered GOOG 411 voice-activated directory service. Google voice recognition development efforts are based off of this database.

Google also has voicemail transcription for its Google Voice service. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but if I recall correctly, this phoneme database is kept separate for privacy purposes. Again, this was generated in house. Voicemail transcription was a new feature added after the acquisition of GrandCentral.
 
Amazon buying a speech recognition company? Isn't that the company about to put out a new tablet product with no microphone?
 
I haven't tried Siri yet, but is it just me or does it seem like a bad idea? This voice recognition and all. I almost feel like not upgrading my phone because of it. Seems like a gimmick. Do I really want to talk to my phone in public letting those around me what i'm planning or doing?

Not sure if this is the way to go.
 
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