What do you notice? Superficially, the biggest difference is that Google emphasizes that what you’re talking to is a piece of technology. Your commands have a unified structure they need to follow. For example, you would say, “Call <name of user as written in address book> at <location>” in order to place a phone call to anyone, regardless of who that person is to you. All people are treated the safe. Siri, on the other hand, makes things as personal as possible. Depending on the person’s relationship to you, you can use more friendly language, like “Call my wife.” It feels a lot more like talking to a person, which makes the conversation both more natural and more magical.
Or take something significantly more straight-ahead and functional: weather. On Google Voice Actions, you talk like you’re dictating a Google search: “weather San Francisco Oct. 7”. And then it displays the google search results that appear on a web page. That’s about it. On Siri, you say, “What’s the weather going to be like when I’m in San Francisco? How about Napa.” And the app responds in fairly natural form while also displaying the information it’s talking about in visual form.
From a functional standpoint, this is identical. From an experiential standpoint, it’s worlds apart. Google wants to turn your voice into a keyboard and mouse. Apple wants you to have a different kind of relationship to your phone that looks a lot like your relationships to people.
