Siri, Are You Stealing Searchers from Google?
Source: Damon Poeter
Is Siri poaching Internet searchers from Google? That's what The Arora Report's Nigam Arora suggested Monday, citing a "small study" he conducted to "validate the hypothesis that users of Apple's Siri are reducing Google searches."
When Arora says "small," he means it. The unscientific survey of 40 Siri users is anything but conclusive, but there's certainly a lot to chew on―not the least of which is the notion that with Siri on the new iPhone 4S, Apple may just have inserted itself into the search game with an end-around that few people saw coming.
Twenty-seven of the Siri users Arora polled said they hadn't done a single Google search since buying their iPhone 4S. The remaining 13 had conducted two Google searches on average since welcoming Siri into their lives. And "[a]ll 40 users of Siri report that they see no need to go to Google if Siri can answer their question."
Arora's informal study offers some perspective for Google chairman Eric Schmidt's recent claim before Congress that his company is not "overwhelmingly dominant" in search. Schmidt contended that Google faces a number of serious search competitors and even singled out Siri as a "significant development" in the search arena.
"Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information," Schmidt said, referring to new search tools like Apple's popular new voice-recognition platform, which bypasses Google for things like restaurant searches.
Earlier this year, Schmidt designated Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook as the "Big Four" of consumer technology, each with their own particular strengths. Now one of those four, Apple suddenly looks like it's discovered a way to begin taking on Google in the area that company has dominated for so long: search.
Arora goes even further and says his sources maintain that "Google has been blindsided by Siri."
"A small study at The Arora Report, if validated with larger studies, is a cause of panic for Google," he writes. "Apple does not generate revenues from Siri. Siri simply helps Apple to sell more phones. The point is that the business model of Apple is to make money by selling phones."
"The business model of Google is to make money from advertisements on search results. There is no question that Google is probably hard at work to counter Siri. However, the business model of Google may get in the way. How does Google generate revenues that are given verbally? I cannot imagine Google requiring a person to hear an advertisement before receiving the search results," he continued. "Every answer that Siri provides using Wikipedia, Yelp, or Wolfram Alpha is business taken away from Google."
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