The battle between Google and Apple continues as the god of advertising plots to topple over Siri with Google Assistant. Originally code-named Majel, Google wants to take voice technology to the next level.
Apple set foot on new turf with Siri and gave iPhone users hands-free control over their devices. Acting as a personal assistant, you can schedule reminders, send texts, post tweets, play music, and do a lot of things with an iPhone by giving voice commands. Back then, Android users couldn’t help but wonder what Google thought about it. And they responded with a project which goes by the name “Majel”, which they say would be an evolved version of Google Voice.
Google Voice has been on Android a long time ago but its functions weren’t as advanced as Siri. Majel would be an evolution of that and hopefully provide Android users with the same functions as Siri. Google’s Matias Duarte hinted in a previous interview that unlike Siri, every piece of computing chip in Majel would be voice-aware – in a Star Trek, enterprise ship kind of way.
More details of Majel surfaced days ago but it has lost its name to a generic-sounding “Google Assistant”. Google doesn’t plan to match Siri but to surpass it. While Google Voice is mostly about searching the web for information, Google Assistant will be more about helping users do tasks – pretty much like how Siri works. And as much as we love Android’s open-source nature, Google will be releasing sources for developers to feast on. What this does is allow developers to integrate their apps to Assistant.
An insider says that Google will be announcing Assistant on the fourth quarter of 2012.
