Google’s success in search is undeniable.  Google captures user intent at the very moment it’s desired (the ‘search’) and monetises upon that. But Apple has gone one step further with Siri, which could cause search engines to fall by the wayside. Many have discounted Siri as just another voice recognition application (although Charlie Brooker refers to Siri as "a creep.. that works annoyingly well", but in reality (in my opinion) it represents the beginning of a new paradigm of computing. Siri, unlike Google captures user intent before it ever hits a search engine, understands it and routes it to the vendor/site of the user’s choice.

Siri’s ‘super-context’ is the magic behind its profound computing power. It knows your location, your daily schedule, your contacts, your tweets, how far you’ve run, what YouTube videos you've watched, who you’ve emailed, what book you’re reading, your favourite music tracks, and more. Now compare that to what Google knows about you, even with all the cookies they embed into their ecosystem, and Siri begins to look like the clear winner.

In the mobile environment, wading through pages of links and disjointed interfaces that clearly haven’t been optimised for the mobile web just to find a single piece of information can be frustrating to say the least. Instead, Siri does all this for you behind the scenes, and it may result in the beginning of online companies optimising for Apple as well as Google.

Siri will enable us to interact with different interfaces in an entirely new manner which we will begin to see unfold with the iPhone 4S, but it won’t be long before it moves to the iPad, TV and even into the home with Bluetooth 4. Siri plus Bluetooth 4 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) will have a sagacious interaction relationship. BLE devices, controlled by Siri create the possibility of connecting us with everything all the time. For example, “Siri, turn the oven on, to 200C”, “Siri, turn the downstairs lights on” and “Siri, unlock the front door”, may all sound a little futuristic but will all become possibilities sooner than you expect.