Report: Google’s Answer to Siri May Be Coming by Q4 2012

Anytime the tech world eagerly awaits some new exciting technology, rumors swirl about the what, where, and when of it. For that matter, the rumor mill churns up conjecture about everything from the color of the impending thing to the price tag. Accordingly, speculation about Google’s inevitable answer to Apple’s Siri artificial intelligence assistant for iOS abounds.

We heard a while back that Google’s version was cleverly codenamed “Majel” and had little else to go on, but now a report from TechCrunch has some more on the story.

The report indicates that the tool may be named “Assistant”, it will be released to developers who ideally will integrate the technology into a slew of devices, and it might be available by the end of the year.


The TechCrunch piece breaks down the project into three parts. The first part is to “get the world’s knowledge into a format a computer can understand”; the second part is to create a layer of personalization based on the vast amounts of data Google harvests from all of us; and the third part is to build a voice-controlled “Do engine” out of the whole thing.

Of course, all of this information come from unnamed sources, so it’s impossible to know whether it’s accurate--and even if it is, it could change substantially while in development. However, it’s an entertaining and exciting daydream to think of the ability to control our phones, computers, TVs, cameras, and more with just our voices.

We just hope when it finally reaches consumers that it works well and that Google comes up with a more creative name than “Assistant”.