10-28-2011, 03:41 PM
Hmm. Are we certain Siri isn't using Google APIs? Seems like a lot of work to invent a solid voice recognition system and then additionally invent a massive data search engine to drive it. I had assumed it was being driven off of one of the existing search engines, likely Google.
I wouldn't say Google is an advertising company -- I'd call them a data company. Advertising is just one more thing you can do with a bunch of data. They wouldn't want to compete with Siri if they could instead simply sell them access to data.
And yes, Apple is still a hardware company. They do make software, but it's for their hardware. You wouldn't say Tivo is a software company or Samsung is a software company, even though they have software for their devices. When I hear "software company", I think of a company that sells software which runs on other people's hardware, which Apple mostly tries to avoid. It's probably only with great reluctance that iTunes runs on Windows.
I wouldn't say Google is an advertising company -- I'd call them a data company. Advertising is just one more thing you can do with a bunch of data. They wouldn't want to compete with Siri if they could instead simply sell them access to data.
And yes, Apple is still a hardware company. They do make software, but it's for their hardware. You wouldn't say Tivo is a software company or Samsung is a software company, even though they have software for their devices. When I hear "software company", I think of a company that sells software which runs on other people's hardware, which Apple mostly tries to avoid. It's probably only with great reluctance that iTunes runs on Windows.