Google sees Apple’s Siri as a challenge

OFF AND ON VOICE APP Siri could present Google with a serious challenge according to its chairman, Eric Schmidt, but then so could anything else that happens on the internet.

Schmidt made the statement in a letter to lawyers, according to AFP, as he was trying to distance his firm from suggestions of market domination.

"Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S," wrote Schmidt to the US Senate antitrust subcommittee as he discussed what other market forces are keeping the internet search market open.

"Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter also allow users to leverage their social networks to find answers to their questions. Google is therefore competing with all methods available to access information on the Internet, not just other general search engines," he added in the letter released on Friday.

"The source of Facebook's competition with Google is not only through using Bing to search the Internet but, also by offering users a fundamentally different way to discover and connect with information on the Internet. Google has many strong competitors, So inferring that Google is in any way 'dominant' in search would be incorrect." µ