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Apple Buys Siri, Wants to Conquer Voice Search
   

This week has seen a lot of money flying around, with big companies acquiring small ones. Among them, Apple snapped up a speech recognition app that few of us probably even heard of in the first place.Gizmodo has some interesting perspective on Apple’s latest acquisition of Siri, Inc., which they describe as “a startup you’ve probably never heard of.” The company’s one and only iPhone app in the App Store is Siri Assistant, which promises to take your plain English voice commands and gather answers and actions from your favorite brands -- including posts and search on services like Twitter.Although neither Siri nor Apple are confirming the acquisition price, early estimates place it in the $200 million range -- a considerable amount of dough for a startup who just appeared on the scene this year. To no one’s surprise, the acquisition is widely considered to be another shot across the bow of Google, the search giant who has included an OS-based voice search in Android since version 1.6.Apple has already attempted an OS-level voice search feature with Voice Control in iPhone OS 3.0 for the 3GS, but as Gizmodo notes, it’s “phone-facing and quite limited,” where Android’s voice search is aimed to the Internet, which is where the information really is. Although it’s too early to tell what Apple’s plans for Siri may be, Cupertino is likely feeling the pressure to ramp up their own voice search efforts.“In competitive terms, they’re catching up with -- and possibly even shutting out -- one of their biggest competitors,” theorizes Gizmodo’s John Herrman. “The easiest way to get decent voice search on your iPhone right now is to download an app made by Google; Siri, though good, doesn’t have the kind of visibility that the big G’s app does.”That situation could clearly change, especially if Apple finds a way to add Siri’s technology to iPhone OS -- maybe even with the 4.0 release expected in early summer, presumably alongside new hardware.(Image courtesy of Gizmodo)
     

http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_buys_siri_wants_conquer_voice_search