Eric Schmidt Senate Subcommittee: Siri could be a competitive threat to Google

In September, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared before the Senate antitrust subcommittee due to Google’s allegations that the company was abusing its leadership in online search. As one would expect from anyone in his situation, Schmidt spent most of his time defending Google’s position at the top of the search industry, and even named a number of competitors of the company as evidence of its honest work.

Among the "competitive threats" called Schmidt were the expected Bing, Yahoo and Amazon. And also Siri. “Apple launched a completely new approach to search technology: Siri is a voice search and task-based service embedded in the iPhone 4S,” he wrote, referring to a number of publications that feature Apple’s speech assistant as “killer Google” and “entry point Apple's search market.

“Siri is a significant development, which is a voice-only means of accessing answers to the iPhone, which demonstrates innovation in search,” explained Schmidt. "Google has many strong competitors, and we sometimes are not able to anticipate the competitive threats of new methods of accessing information."
')
Of course, there is nothing surprising in this praising of competitors - given that the action takes place in front of officials whose goal is to fight against anti-competitive practices. However, it should be noted that Schmidt’s comments have changed markedly since last year, when he denied that Apple and Facebook pose a “competitive threat” to Google’s search business. As he says now: "My statement was clearly wrong."

via Engadget , CNET