Remember all that talk about Apple building a Search Engine?  It’s starting to look like they did just that…

Apple's new Siri voice control on the iPhone 4S can answer questions, access information and deliver search results without displaying any advertising, which one analysis says will hurt search providers like Google.

If users were to become more accustomed to search by voice through Siri rather than visiting Google's website and typing a query, it could place Google at risk, a new analysis from Nigam Arora suggests. Arora noted that before buying an iPhone 4S with Siri, he was required to search for an Indian restaurant through Google's website.

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Arora believes that Siri could change users' mobile habits, making them search for information via Apple's Siri rather than directly through Google. He thinks Siri is a better solution because it provides a small number of relevant results rather than a long list that users must sort through. Plus, he views advertisements on a small screen like an iPhone as a distraction.

The hallmark of a great business decision is it looks obvious in retrospect.  In the late 70s Microsoft and Apple were probably the only two companies in the world that believed there’d be a computer on every desk.  Now it seems foolish for people to have believed anything else. 

That’s what makes this situation so hilarious to me.  If you look at Siri in this context it should have been obvious. 

Yet most people, including Google, never saw it coming.  In fact Google probably thought this was a benefit because Siri defers to Google if it can’t find another answer.  But as Siri gets better and better you’ll see it going to Google less and less.  At which point Google dies a death of a thousand cuts. 

(I don’t believe Google will fully die but you get the point). 

As for the rest of us we should have seen it coming.  This is exactly the type of Search Engine Apple would build.   The Apple mentality has always been one where the user gives them control in exchange for the benefits of a culled environment.  That’s exactly what Siri is.  A culled environment wrapped in some fancy speech recognition. 

You don’t tell it where to search you simply ask it a question and Siri picks the best sources and delivers them to you.  I, for example, rarely ever used Wolfram Alpha for anything before Siri.  Now I use it 3 or 4 times a day because it was Apple’s choice.  Just like they choose what apps get into the App store or what Mac features developers can use. 

So looking back isn’t it now obvious that Siri is a Search Engine?