When you ask Siri on the iPhone 4S what the best phone in the world is, you will receive amusing answers such as “There are other phones?” etc. It is of course quite funny, but recently it started showing results from Wolfram Alpha with a link showing that the Lumia 900 was the best.
This changed when Apple reverted back to speaking amusing answers rather than displaying the result from Wolfram. You can sort of understand why Apple would not want another phone being highlighted and if we are honest, the question has no single accurate answer because it is a matter of opinion.
However, part of Siri’s functionality is to act like a search engine and any intervention by Apple skews the results away from what is available on the web. This, in my opinion, greatly reduces the effectiveness of the service and makes it an unreliable tool. If Google did the same thing, the whole world would be up in arms about the company manipulating search results.
Search results are manipulated, but have to be done so in a way that is obvious. Advertised results are clearly shown on Google and Twitter and that works well for all concerned; the advertisers, the users and the companies providing the search and social networking data.
The moment you step over the line and obscure results, no matter how amusingly you do it, you step outside of the remit of search and the service loses all credibility. Just saying…
About Shaun McGill