Schmidt calls Siri a significant development, threat to Google Search

Siri has become the most highlighted feature in the latest version of Apple’s operating system – iOS 5. Obviously, it hasn’t missed out on attention from Apple’s competitors. In a statement to the U.S Senate Antitrust subcommittee, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt called Apple’s Siri personal assistance technology a ‘significant development’ in search. He further said that Google’s core business (Search) could face a threat with this technology, reports AppleInsider. Apple bought Siri last year, and incorporated it in the iPhone 4S. The feature is still in the beta testing, stage which was evident from the recent outage that it faced. 

Siri, a threat to Google Search?

The statements by Schmidt were made in response to the questions by the subcommittee, revealed by Neowin.net.  Reportedly, he also cited publications which called Siri a ‘Google killer.’ Moreover, Siri isn’t the only budding competitor in the search engine domain, he also pointed out the newer methods of searching information.  These include social networks, special search engines, mobile apps, and more along with older search engines like Bing and Yahoo! “Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information,” Schmidt said.

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Is Siri a threat to Google? Right now, we don’t think so. Schmidt appears to be simply trying to downplay Google and its gigantic search strength.