With Siri Search for Apple TV, Apple Could Beat Google at Its Own Game

The new Apple TV, unfurled at Apple’s marquee event on Wednesday, may not transform the world. But it could give Apple a leg up in its long-standing battle with Google.

When introducing its TV service, Apple focused extensively on the presence of Siri, its voice-activated artificial intelligence. There’s a Siri button on the Apple TV remote. It lets users find content from Apple’s library and search within shows, asking Siri, for instance, to rewind a few seconds or to find a particular actor’s cameo. Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP, said the function “will search across multiple content apps and give you all your viewing options on a single screen.”

There’s another key feature for Siri on Apple TV, one that may have Google on alert. Viewers can pause shows midstream, through voice activation, to ask related or unrelated questions. Watching “Modern Family” and curious about the score of the San Francisco Giants game? Just ask Siri. She’ll pull it up for you on the screen.

Sound familiar? It should if you’ve been following what Google has in the works on mobile. Now on Tap, its upcoming feature on Android, does precisely this — pulling Google’s search information into relevant moments within apps. It’s part of its ongoing effort at “deep linking” and app indexing, methods to scrape app content much like it has the Web.

Apple has hinted at similar efforts on mobile, a move that concerns Google, since it would, conceivably, limit Google’s search reach. Google has yet to announce plans to bring its search to other platforms, like the television. But it’s not a stretch to assume it will. Although, Google has stumbled with its television plans in the past.

Google is still widely considered well ahead of Apple on search and AI technology. Still, it looks as though Apple is trying to race ahead.

https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/641672585500098560

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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