So, Siri was originally supposed to be for Android phones?

[pm]

Yeah I was thinking that in terms of voice talk/respond, Siri is way ahead of Google Now. When I played with it, Google Now really doesn't understand a wide range of phrases and defaults into chucking them into a Google search.

However, the non-voice related aspects of Google Now (which is consistent with everyone's praise of Google Now) doesn't have a 1st party equivalent

This is exactly my thinking as well. I've played extensively with Google's Voice Actions, and Google's speech recognition on a Nexus 4, and I've used Siri on an iPhone 5. I thought in general that Google's speech recognition capability is a bit better, but it's actual list of "action" words seemed smaller and more limited, and I had to choose my words more carefully to get it to do what I want it to do. So in terms of speech recognition, I've overally been more impressed with Siri than with Google's speech recognition.

But Google Now is a totally different piece of software and I'm totally in love with that. But that's not really a Siri replacement and has very little to do with speech recognition at all... it's more like a new and different virtual assistant capability that isn't even relevant to a discussion of Google's voice search vs. Siri. People can debate which is more useful for their daily needs - Siri or Google Now - but comparing the two in terms of which is "better" is a bit like comparing oranges to Apples.

 

[openwheel]

disagree with your Apples vs Oranges analogy.

They are extremely similar. One must be better than another for any given user.

Siri is definitely better for my 12 year old cousin who likes to joke with Siri.

Google Now is better for my boss who is a power user.

 

[Tom]

I've gotta question about Google Now and multiple gmail accounts. Actually its more of a Nexus 7 question..my Nexus 7 primary gmail account isn't my main gmail account for most the stuff I do. So I'm not getting as much benefit from Google Now as I could be.

I know I can have seperate multiple accounts on my Nexus 7 now, but can Google Now monitor multiple gmail accounts while I'm logged into one account on my Nexus 7 ?

 

[pm]

disagree with your Apples vs Oranges analogy.

They are extremely similar. One must be better than another for any given user.

Siri is definitely better for my 12 year old cousin who likes to joke with Siri.

Google Now is better for my boss who is a power user.

You don't talk to Google Now. It gives you cards that have useful information on them. There's the Google Voice Actions feature in Android, but that's not Google Now and it was present back in Gingerbread. You don't get cards with Siri, you talk to your phone and it does things that you tell it to do. They are completely different functions. There's almost no overlap at all. Siri doesn't interrupt you to tell you "hey, you are late to the airport and here's how to get there". And Google Now doesn't allow you to tell your phone to play a specific playlist of music while you are driving down the road.

If you compare Google Voice Actions or Google Voice Search to Siri, I think Siri is the better of the two and I can actually give you a list of common phrases (like "play playlist my top rated") that work better in Siri than in Google Voice Actions.

If you want to compare Google Now to anything on an iPhone... there's no comparison because the iPhone doesn't have anything that does anything like Google Now. Google Now is an immensely cool feature that the iPhone simply doesn't do... at all.

 

[Eug]

Both of these are pretty much useless to me, except in the car. And even then, all I ever do with it in the car is search for directions for Google Maps, or else make calls or respond to texts or something.

 

[openwheel]

Still disagree.

Depends on your definition of "talk to". If you ask Google Now who the President is, it will answer by voice and give you an info card. Siri is extremely similar. Certainly they are not 100% or even 90% identical, but they are still extremely similar in terms of voice interaction.

Aren't voice action commands part of Google Now? I can call up Apollo and play Beatles, navigate to the nearest In&Out, set alarm...etc.

Siri may not provide "cards" often. She simply does it in a limited fashion. That weather info looks just like a card to me.

You don't talk to Google Now. It gives you cards that have useful information on them. There's the Google Voice Actions feature in Android, but that's not Google Now and it was present back in Gingerbread. You don't get cards with Siri, you talk to your phone and it does things that you tell it to do. They are completely different functions. There's almost no overlap at all. Siri doesn't interrupt you to tell you "hey, you are late to the airport and here's how to get there". And Google Now doesn't allow you to tell your phone to play a specific playlist of music while you are driving down the road.

If you compare Google Voice Actions or Google Voice Search to Siri, I think Siri is the better of the two and I can actually give you a list of common phrases (like "play playlist my top rated") that work better in Siri than in Google Voice Actions.

If you want to compare Google Now to anything on an iPhone... there's no comparison because the iPhone doesn't have anything that does anything like Google Now. Google Now is an immensely cool feature that the iPhone simply doesn't do... at all.

 

[pm]

Still disagree.

Depends on your definition of "talk to". If you ask Google Now who the President is, it will answer by voice and give you an info card. Siri is extremely similar. Certainly they are not 100% or even 90% identical, but they are still extremely similar in terms of voice interaction.

Aren't voice action commands part of Google Now? I can call up Apollo and play Beatles, navigate to the nearest In&Out, set alarm...etc.

Siri may not provide "cards" often. She simply does it in a limited fashion. That weather info looks just like a card to me.

Ok, yeah, you are right. I forgot about that because that's not how I use either one of them. I tend to use Siri to play music, set reminders and send messages, not to actaully look things up. And similarly, I don't tend to search for things on Android with Google Now. I just use the cards that I get by default that Google wants to show me - and they are frequently really useful.

But yeah, you are right and in the respect of search results they do function similarly and I agree with you and retract my statement that they are different and hand this round over to you.