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Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

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Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#151

Post by JamesSwift »

chetanahuja wrote: post #79

Even though the study (albeit informal) did not include personal assistant functionality, that's where Google Now (as manifested in an Android phone connected to a google account) really shines, in that like a real personal assistant, it brings you relevant information before you even ask . Around this time last year, I used to be startled by a timely reminder on the home screen widget about the next thing I was abou…

Agreed. I've always been pleasantly surprised by things that Google Now has brought to my attention.

Some examples of things I've not done anything to explictly be told about, but have been relevant when shown:

- Directions to a restaurant I'm about to go to

- Flight delayed notification

- Traffic time abnormalities going to/from work

- Package shipping updates

- Sports scores for teams I'm interested in

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#152

Post by chetanahuja »

rayiner wrote: post #116
chetanahuja wrote: post #79

Even though the study (albeit informal) did not include personal assistant functionality, that's where Google Now (as manifested in an Android phone connected to a google account) really shines, in that like a real personal assistant, it brings you relevant information before you even ask . Around this time last year, I used to be startled by a timely reminder on the home screen widget about the next thing I was abou…

Having used a Nexus 5 for a year, I strongly disagree. Pulling stuff from your gmail is a cute trick, but it never happened reliably enough where I would actually trust it. Especially when you're not otherwise bought into the Google ecosystem. So with either, I'm in the mode of dictating things manually. And Siri shines at that. At least for me, voice recognition on my 6+ is much faster than on my Nexus 5. It always…

"Pulling stuff from your gmail is a cute trick" ...

It has proven to be an incredibly powerful feature at least for me. I could repeat the list of things others have listed (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435239 ) but why be redundant.

"Especially when you're not otherwise bought into the Google ecosystem"

Well yeah. I have to admit that at work I'm a heavy user of google calendar and email and in personal life maps, navigation, email, calendar and google search. Honestly, that's what I see most iPhone users around me use too. The point here is that if google cloud services are already in your life (as they are in 100's of millions of people's lives), Google Now on Android puts a nice face to it and brings them together in a very user-friendly and intuitive way.

"I'm in the mode of dictating things manually. And Siri shines at that"

Perhaps you didn't read the original posting that we're discussing here. It shows how far Siri has to go to catch up with Google's Now's voice search.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#153

Post by nobody_nowhere »

escapologybb wrote: post #94

Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even…

Hey, thanks for pointing out the impact of this technology from the perspective of a quadriplegic. It's always eye opening when a technology I really like turns out to be a lifesaver (hopefully not putting words in your mouth) for people with disabilities. Had a similar revelation re amazon home delivery recently. Great to see these technologies making meaningful improvements in peoples' lives.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#154

Post by mark_l_watson »

pinkyand wrote: post #132
mark_l_watson wrote: post #113

I think these results were slightly biased because questions seemed to have been chosen to trigger Google search infobox results. BTW, I worked with Knowledge Graph last year when I consulted at Google. It is an incredibly nice project. The team, who helped me when I needed help, was great - constantly improving the platform. I am also using the IBM Watson APIs right now while helping another customer, so I feel like…

How does Watson compares to the Google technology in your opinion ?

I think they are very different.

Knowledge Graph builds on linked data and semantic web technologies to encode knowledge that is served on an efficient scalable platform.

IBM Watson is a system for ingesting large amounts of text and for then allowing natural language queries on the information in the text.

Both are valuable properties.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#155

Post by sytelus »

apendleton wrote: post #127
sytelus wrote: post #33

There were not random queries. In fact, they were picked because we felt they were likely to trigger a knowledge panel. For a good believable test your sampling methodology is very important. In fact, you want to have a random sample that is free of biases instead of somebody cherry picking queries. Perhaps you may do random weighted sample of queries with weights = frequency which represents usage pattern more close…

Out of curiosity, how would you propose taking a random sample of all possible questions?

If you want to do this kind of test with more discipline, you would give out random phones to randomly selected N people who have never used any of these services before. Then log each query they do for a week or two. Afterwards you can run same queries through all 3 services, generate results and do human judgement on mechanical turk about which one is the best. The science of measuring these stuff is complex and I've omitted many complexities here, for example, you want to do multiple judgement for same query, you need someway to measure judgement quality itself, you need great judgement guidelines that covers edge cases etc. Usually in organizations that work with big data, you will find competent measurement team building tools for these kind of measurements with years of investment.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#156

Post by Tloewald »

guardian5x wrote: post #55

One of the killer features of Cortana is that she gets back to you if she wants additional information. You can almost have something like a dialogue. I don't think that test has taken that into account at all.

Siri did that from day one.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#157

Post by mikeash »

toxican wrote: post #136
escapologybb wrote: post #94

Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even…

I really like the "Hey Siri!" feature, although why it's only usable while the phone is charging is beyond me. I thought maybe battery concerns since it has to be constantly listening, but I wouldn't think it would be that taxing on the battery. How do you handle typos in iOS as a quadriplegic? They're a pain in the ass to fix by hand and I didn't even know you could do it by voice.

You can do voice activation for very little power if you have dedicated hardware for it. The iPhone doesn't have such dedicated hardware (presumably they decided to add that feature after most of the current hardware shipped) so the constant listening has to run on the main CPU. That in turn means that the main CPU never gets to idle for more than a few milliseconds while the feature is active, so it'll suck up a lot of power compared to just sleeping normally.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#158

Post by mikeash »

escapologybb wrote: post #94

Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even…

We had a quadriplegic friend live with us when I was a kid for several years in the 80s. He spent a lot of time watching TV... there just weren't a lot of options. We had a clapper set up that he could activate by making sounds with his tongue, and a stick he could hold in his mouth to manipulate the remote control, and also do things like make phone calls.

He was a smart guy and was really interested in all sorts of things, but he was sadly limited. Posts like yours remind me of him and make me wonder how he'd get on with modern technology. I do recall investigating speech recognition back in the day, I think it was an early version of Dragon, but the cost was just too high and the uses, with 80s-era computers and no internet or even nearby BBSs to connect to, were just too little. Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#159

Post by mikeash »

b2themax wrote: post #86
wutbrodo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker to find results. I haven't used Cortana, and have only had disappointing experiences with Siri (after coming from Google Voice Search); how does the performance on Google Voice Search Compare? I wonder if the performance rankings are just a complete reversal of the…

I haave used Google Now briefly with the Moto X. It is definitely faster than Siri in my experience. Speed is so important when it comes to these virtual assistants. I sincerely believe Siri is the worst of the bunch, which really stinks because I expected a lot more from a 900$ iPhone.

Siri is entirely in The Cloud™ so your phone doesn't matter much, aside from the speed of its internet connection.

Have you tried it on iOS 8 since it came out? They finally added streaming voice recognition, which speeds it up a lot in my experience. Previously, it waited until you were done speaking to initiate the upload, which added a pretty big delay to any response.

Re: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

#160

Post by rayiner »

chetanahuja wrote: post #152
rayiner wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used a Nexus 5 for a year, I strongly disagree. Pulling stuff from your gmail is a cute trick, but it never happened reliably enough where I would actually trust it. Especially when you're not otherwise bought into the Google ecosystem. So with either, I'm in the mode of dictating things manually. And Siri shines at that. At least for me, voice recognition on my 6+ is much faster than on my Nexus 5. It always…

"Pulling stuff from your gmail is a cute trick" ... It has proven to be an incredibly powerful feature at least for me. I could repeat the list of things others have listed (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435239 ) but why be redundant. "Especially when you're not otherwise bought into the Google ecosystem" Well yeah. I have to admit that at work I'm a heavy user of google calendar and email and in persona…

I don't see the utility, honestly. The stuff I need to remember is in my company's Exchange server, not in my gmail. All I get in Google Now is reminders of people's birthdays who I don't care about.
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