Siri Timeline: The Story So Far

March 2012

• Mar. 7: No Siri on iPad 3
• Mar. 3: Rumors that Google will call its voice assistant “Assistant” and that the product will be released in Q4, 2012
• Mar. 2: Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) UK ruling in favor of Apple

February 2012

• Feb. 29: Controversy over Siri not working in UK as advertised (business search)
• Feb. 28: Apple clarifies publicly that Voice Assistants are fair game and that they will work with Evi team
• Feb. 27: Rumors that Apple is removing Evi from App Store
• Feb. 24: Mercedes Benz announces integration with Siri
• Feb. 20: ABC News Foxconn Report about Apple Factories
• Feb. 21. MyAssistant Siri jailbreak
• Feb. 18: Utter on Android
• Feb. 17: No Siri on Mountain Lion OS
• Feb. 11: Apple files for preliminary injunction against Google Galaxy Nexus
• Feb. 8: 25% of Wolfram traffic comes via Siri

January 2012

• Jan. 24: Evi arrives in Apple Appstore and Gogle Markerplace
• Jan. 20: Steve Wozniak “prefers” Androids
• Jan. 4: Siri mentioned in TV Show Big Bang Theory
• Jan. 2: AskZiggy comes out on MSFT Store

December 2011

• Dec. 20: Best Buy catalogue accessible via Wolfram on Siri
• Dec. 20: Nuance buys vLingo
• Dec. 18: Santa video hits the air
• Dec. 14: Google buys Clever Sense — developer of Alfred Assistant App
• Dec. 13: Rumors of Google Majel start circulating
• Dec. 7: Apple hiring aggressively to fix Siri issues
• Dec. 2: Thousands petition Apple on Abortion issue

November 2011

• Nov. 30: Abortion controversy
• Nov. 24: Siri Proxy to start a car
• Nov. 23: Microsoft claims they had Siri like technology a year ago
• Nov. 21: Siri Proxy control of thermostat
• Nov. 17: Robin Williams Siri video
• Nov. 16: Husband and wife Siri video
• Nov. 15: Siri Protocol hacked by Applidium
• Nov. 10: Man behing Siri UK voice revealed
• Nov. 9: Reports that Amazon bought Yap
• Nov. 8. Video of Siri ported to iPhone 3GS
• Nov. 6: Google Eric Schmidt admits that Siri is a threat to Google model
• Nov. 6: Rumors that Apple will release Siri on iPhone 4
• Nov. 4: First major Siri Outage

October 2011

• Oct. 14: iPhone 4S hits US market.
• Oct. 5: Steve Jobs passes away
• Oct. 4: Arrival of iPhone 4S and Siri Announced

April 2010

• Apple acquires Siri, Inc. from SRI

February 2010

• Siri, Inc. launches its Virtual personal Assistant app for the iPhone 3GS

November 2009

• Siri, Inc. raises a $15.5 million Series B financing round from the same investors as in their previous round plus Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing

October 2008

• Siri, Inc. announces it has raised an $8.5 million Series A financing round, led by Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures

December 2007

• SRI spins off Siri, Inc. to bring the technology to consumers

July 2003

• DARPA Selects SRI to lead the Personalized Assistant that Learns (PAL) Program. SRI and a team of 20 leading research organizations are awarded $22M over five years to develop software, dubbed CALO to revolutionize how computers support military and other decision-makers. It is considered to be the largest artificial intelligence project in history

Quaking in their Boots: Google and Amazon

Google executive chairman and former chief, Eric Schmidt, finally conceded this past week that Siri indeed could pose a “competitive threat” to the company’s core business model.  As we all know, Google generates its billions from click-able ad links returned in the context of generic searches.  You get your results on the main body of the screen,  with ads on top and at the bottom, and on the sides of that body of results.  Siri obviously threatens this arrangement since there is no screen to view search results or space to show those ad supported links.  It is going to be fascinating to watch how Google deals with this.  Google does have quite a bit to come back with in terms of their own voice and natural language technology, but one can see now how Google would have totally soft peddled pushing the envelope on non-visual voice assistants.   I for one, to be perfectly honest, did not see this aspect of the equation and all along thought that Google would be the one to break ground on voice technology.  And I thought that Apple — in spite of its acquisition of Siri (which I thought was merely tactical maneuvering by Apple) — did not have the imaginative capacity to break of the world of visually centric UIs, given its history from day one.  I was off on both counts!

Amazon, on the other hand, also seems to have decided to move into the space with the acquisition of Yap.  To be fair, Amazon’s move to acquire Yap started months before the launch of Siri, as the SEC filing shows.  So, I think we can safely say now that something is in the air about the key role that voice will play in the next generation of smart devices, and that we have probably reached a convergence of multiple forces — technologies, infrastructures, and market expectations — for the holy grail of interfaces to finally become real and part of our lives.  Let’s see what the Amazon folks are thinking about: perhaps speech enabling their Kindle? — i.e., an expert voice assistant that will make your reading experience much more enjoyable?

Also, let’s watch what happens next with Facebook and Twitter.  For Facebook, we will probably see a joint activity between Microsoft and Facebook — given that Microsoft does have very strong technologies in Speech, a healthy bench of talent, and deep pockets (as Facebook does), and a joint move would make perfect sense.  As for twitter, not sure what they can do on their own (and maybe they don’t want to do anything on their own), given that they are already embedded in the iOS5, and I am pretty certain that one of the next upgrades of Siri will be the ability issue twitter commands and post tweets by voice.