Apple and Google are becoming increasingly competitive, and it would seem that they’re even competing for who can acquire the most companies in the shortest amount of time. Apple has now acquired Siri and Intrinsity.
Siri is a voice command-based personal assistant app that lets you tell it what you want to do, and it will do most of the work for you, whether that be find the right restaurant and book a reservation, get a cab, or whatever. Watch this clip to see how it works:
Based on the clip, Siri does a pretty good job of interpreting your voice commands. One example shown is, "Take me drunk, I’m home." It interprets it how it was meant and finds a cab.
Some in the geek community view this as a big gain for Apple. Robert Scoble, who broke the news of the acquisition calls Siri the "Future of the Web."
"The value in unlocked is huge. This shows Apple is very willing to buy its way into the new mobile web and the new API-driven web," he says. "This also could be a major cornerstone in how it competes with Google."
Intrinsity, the other company Apple acquired, is a chip-maker, and is reported to make particularly fast ones. The New York Times calls the acquisition a way for Apple to "gain an edge over its competitors." You may recall that Google also just bought a chip maker, run by former Apple employees.