Google’s Eric Schmidttold a Senate subcommittee recently that he believes Apple’s Siri technology poses a threat to Google in the search market.
As I noted this past June, my statement last September was clearly wrong. The Internet is dynamic and has changed significantly. The importance of social networking to consumers’ online experience has changed remarkably-even over the past year. Consumers are looking for answers when they conduct searches online, and social search has become a serious competitor in helping people find those answers online. Similarly, Apple’s Siri is a significant development-a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search. The tech industry is one of the most competitive and dynamic spaces in the entire economy, with small companies as well as larger companies competing hardagainst each other in lots of areas. Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate
the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information. We compete against a broader arrayof companies than most people realize, including general search engines.-Eric Schmidt
Eric Schmidt was answering questions posed in the Antitrust hearing, acknowledging that fact that Siri is a hugely viable competitor as a search engine.
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