A few days back I asked when Apple might incorporate their own search engine into OS6 in order to eat into Google's market. In the comments there it was pointed out that to some extent this is exactly what Siri is doing. And there's more speculation along exactly these lines today:
Much more than just a clever feature, Siri is emerging as a key tool for what some in the industry call "casual search" - quickly finding routine information such as a restaurant location.
This can bypass Google and other traditional search engines. That serves the interests of Apple, which sees an opportunity to muscle in on its rival's core business and build related advertising revenue.
Siri is also a potential lifeline for Yelp and other content companies, which have found themselves competing with Google.
That's an interesting way of looking at the point. Instead of trying to compete directly with Google on search as a whole, cut out one part of search and compete there. The advantage of this particular sector of the market being that there are already people there looking for help against Google that can be partnered with. Oh, and also that this is one of the more profitable areas of the search market. For clearly people are searching at this point to make an immediate purchase.
It's possible for us to take this further: some musing on future strategizing perhaps. Apple could, if it so wished, include a meta search engine in its OS. This would still allow access to Google search results if that is what the user desired. But it would rather cut the revenue to Google itself which, I have to assume, would be one of Apple's strategic aims.
