One of the largely ignored announcements during Apple’s WWDC was that included with iOS 7 is an update to Siri to improve the results she can provide. Siri will now be able to directly search not only Twitter, Wikipedia and many 3rd party sources, but also Bing! Bing will be the default search index used when Siri needs to access the web for information.
There are a number of different ways to look at this update. Some will assume this is just another move from Apple to distance itself from Google since they are competing fiercely in the mobile phone market. Apple is already moving away from the Google Maps so this could be just one more way to stand out from their competition. If you’re Microsoft, however, this is an obvious bit of recognition from Apple that the Bing search engine provides superior results to the Google search engine.
The truth may lie somewhere in the middle, but the bottom line is Apple and Microsoft, once mortal enemies, are working together to provide iPod, iPad and iPhone users with improved search results. Siri was an advanced and innovative tool when it first came out, but since Google put out the “conversational search” features Siri has been falling behind. With this new access to Bing, however, Siri will be able to offer great search results as well as the traditional sports scores, movie times and restaurants which are close by.
Adding Bing to the back end of Siri will most likely function in a similar way to how Yahoo and Bing’s relationship works. Siri is simply the user interface and Bing is the search index. This is a very complimentary relationship because it allows Yahoo and Apple to get all the benefits of a state of the art search index without having to invest the time and money to create their own. It is great for Bing because it will increase their total number of searches and get them in front of new users. This is critical in Bing’s ongoing campaigns to gain a higher percentage of the lucrative search market.
At this point there is only speculation on how exactly Siri and Bing will interact, and until the iOS 7 update is released it will be difficult to get any solid facts. With Siri’s existing relationships with companies that provide things like sports stats, restaurant reviews and other things that Bing also offers it will be interesting to see if Apple maintains those services or moves them all to Bing’s results. Also, when someone asks Siri to ‘search the web’, today it pulls up a Safari browser with a search performed in the default search engine (Google for most users). Will this be changed to Bing as the default as well?
Still a lot of questions, but it seems to be good news for both Apple and Bing, and especially for users of the new iOS 7 once it is released. What are your thoughts?
