Search Engine Giant Racing the Clock to Deliver Android Siri Competitor at Google I/O?

By now, if you haven’t heard about Apple’s voice assistant, “Siri“, you’re probably doing it wrong. In fact, Apple stirred the pot once again at last week’s WWDC conference by announcing “improved” capabilities for its bread-and-butter app, which managed to kick up headlines all across the Internet. So, yes — we think it’s safe to assume you’re familiar with Siri.

While, the Android OS has had voice commands baked in for ages, the functionality has never gotten the attention it deserves — often times being overlooked completely, likely due to the lack of promotion for the feature and the fact that it doesn’t have a spiffy hipster name.  Furthermore, there are several different standalone apps, like Vlingo, which have also been around for ages as well.

For some time now, there’s been talk of Google gearing up to launch a voice assistant of its own, named Majel. Whether or not that name will stick once the app is finally launched is almost as much of a mystery as the app itself. To this point, we haven’t heard much about it, other than the nifty Star Trek reference (Majel, as in Majel Barrett, both Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s wife and the voice of the computer on the starship Enterprise).

Today, the Internet is abuzz again after an article published by The Wallstreet Journal, which doesn’t really answer many more questions, but it does have a rather interesting statement towards the bottom of the read.

Google, meanwhile, has accelerated plans to launch its own Siri competitor that would work on Android-powered devices, people familiar with the matter have said.

Now, you can take this however you want, but with Google I/O coming up quicker than you can shake a stick at it, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume we might see a sneak preview of the app at that venue. Do I think it will be released to the public this month? Not a chance. I would imagine that, along with announcing the Nexus 7 tablet we’ve all been hearing about, this would be the perfect time to reassure the Android community that Google isn’t rolling over on this battle.

At any rate, we’re going to be keeping a close eye on all the action at I/O and we’ll definitely let you know how it all goes down. Until then, we want to know your thoughts. Should Google take its time and deliver a product that will potentially send iOS to its grave, or should they mash the gas and release it ASAP?

Source: WSJ Via: Talk Android