Friday, December 7, 2012

Siri vs Google Now

As an Android user, I am admittedly writing from a biased standpoint, but I do have some legitimate reasons why Google now is superior to Apple's Siri. From the start, Siri was advertised as an assistant, something you could ask any question of and receive an answer. It has excellent voice recognition, understanding the same question even if it's being asked several different ways. It integrates with your calendar, alarm clock, and various other functions on your phone, as well as searching the internet for sports scores, restaurants nearby, and much more. It is definitely very impressive.

Google Now, however, performs all those functions and more. Perhaps the only area where it is beaten by Siri is voice recognition, specifically the manner in which you ask a question. Simply put, you can talk to Siri like you would a person, yet in my own testing with my Nexus 7 vs my brother's iPhone 5, you sometimes need to phrase your question a certain way for Google Now to understand what you are saying. Besides that, however, Google Now has a lot more features. For one, it does not only answer your questions, but predicts what you want to know by popping up cards during relative times. For example, within a few days it knows where you live and work, and will pop up a card with your route to work and traffic information after your alarm goes off. It also goes through your email and using messages you get from UPS and airlines, it will pop up cards when a package arrives at your door, and a card will appear on the morning of your flight, telling you if it has been delayed or not. The list goes on, yet my last point is that Google Now is also a platform, unlike Siri. Only Apple can add features to Siri, whereas Android developers can integrate their apps into Google Now, making it pop up a card with relevant information at certain times. For these reasons and more, Google Now was awarded Popular Science's award as the biggest innovation of 2012.

No comments:

Post a Comment