With all the excitement coming out concerning the launch of the new iPhone 5C and 5S there has been no shortage of news articles and stories about all the great features. One significant change (especially for marketers) that hasn’t gotten quite the press it deserves is the fact that Siri’s default search engine has changed from Google to Bing. Many questions and requests made to Siri will still be answered directly, without having to access Bing at all, but for anything Siri can’t answer (which is quite a bit) users will be directed to results from Bing.
Another big change in this area is that rather than Siri saying that she doesn’t know the answer, and asking whether you want to search the Internet, she just does the search. The search results are displayed immediately within the Siri screen. This, of course, means far more searches will be performed through Siri than ever before.
While Siri isn’t being used quite as much as many people have predicted when it was first launched, the number of people taking advantage of this virtual digital assistant will continue to climb as the program improves. iOS 7 released a significant update to Siri, making it much easier to interact with and much more intuitive, which will help more people to use it more frequently.
While at this point the number of searches moving from Google to Bing because of Siri won’t significantly change the search industry, it is a significant step in the right direction for Microsoft. Any time people move to Bing, for any reason, Microsoft becomes more mainstream (when it comes to search engines that is); which is exactly what they need to do in order to be successful in the long term.
This move by Apple is the latest in an ongoing feud between Google and Apple. From maps to YouTube and now Siri, the two companies haven’t been playing well for quite some time. While it may seem odd to those who were around during the Apple vs. PC wars, it seems that Microsoft is happy to be the benefactor of the new battle between Apple & Google.
One last interesting (though largely irrelevant) update on Siri in iOS 7. Siri’s iconic voice now has the option to be a male. While still known as Siri, you can adjust it between the girl and boy voice quickly and easily in your phones settings. Or, you can just ask Siri to do it for you.
