Video: Google Now Schools Siri

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Good excuse about the jokes, but in general Google Now isn't a conversational voice assistant. If it can't give you the best answer, it defaults to a google search. It won't ask follow up questions like Siri.

Because Siri can ask follow up questions, it also has the ability to come up with witty responses. While I'm impressed with Google Now's one shot accuracy, it doesn't do much more.

 

[cheezy321]

Here you go:

/snip

Thanks for doing this! I was truly curious to see how Google could handle this. Its obvious by the video that a lot of their questions played to the strengths of Google's new voice search and not Siri. I was curious to see how it would handle questions that played more to the benefits of Siri instead of Google.

 

[BladeVenom]

Android Director: ‘We Have the Most Accurate, Conversational, Synthesized Voice in the World’

That's one thing that has kind of annoyed me, how little effort has gone into making realistic sounding voices. Just compare that to how fast graphics have improved.

 

[sygyzy]

Thanks for doing this! I was truly curious to see how Google could handle this. Its obvious by the video that a lot of their questions played to the strengths of Google's new voice search and not Siri. I was curious to see how it would handle questions that played more to the benefits of Siri instead of Google.

I was happy to help. I will say that it's clear which side you are on and I personally found it unfair that you setup questions that I don't think most users would use. For example, you knew for a fact that Android does not have geofencing. I was surprised, actually, to find that Apple does. I have never seen any of my iPhone 4S using friends (and there are many of them) use geofencing (or Siri for that matter).

I also thought it's silly that you think Google, in their own demo of their software, would use questions/scenarios that cater to Siri's strengths. Does this make any sense to you?

 

[cheezy321]

I was happy to help. I will say that it's clear which side you are on and I personally found it unfair that you setup questions that I don't think most users would use. For example, you knew for a fact that Android does not have geofencing. I was surprised, actually, to find that Apple does. I have never seen any of my iPhone 4S using friends (and there are many of them) use geofencing (or Siri for that matter).

I also thought it's silly that you think Google, in their own demo of their software, would use questions/scenarios that cater to Siri's strengths. Does this make any sense to you?

I was speaking of the video posted in the OP. It never gets deeper than trivia answers or setting a simple appointment at a specific time. The video does a good job of showing google voice actions are now faster than siri. Its marginally faster, not by a huge margin. I believe it's because it transcribes your words on the phone instead of a remote server. Siri still has to send it off to a server to transcribe.

The text message thing worked well, the movie thing did not. There are many ways to say you want to see a movie. I think a phone should be able to understand the context of what you are saying. This is where Siri excels.

Siri understood all of these:
'What is brave about'
'Brave showtimes'
'I need four tickets for brave'

I just said the word 'brave' and it still knew what I was talking about. Context does matter and it helps in a lot of situations.

 

[sygyzy]

What did you not like about the Brave response by Google? You can see a Google results page showing where to buy tickets for the movie. I think you were expecting a "native" app response like the grocery store one right? The reason Siri makes you happier, particularly in this case, is because Siri is entirely partner driving. Siri is made to work with a handful of partners. I wish you posted screenshots of your claims because it's way to say "Siri understood all of these." If anything, I would have complained about Google's handling of the "remind me to buy lettuce when I leave work" example. But we already went over why that didn't work (geofencing).