Ever since Siri for iOS was first announced we've seen countless similar apps arrive on the Google Play Store. Google themselves have even had voice actions long before Siri was even around, only in a much different manor. Since then we've heard various reports that Google is working on their own service called Google Assistant -- also known as Project Majel -- and apparently the development has just been fast-tracked.
We've been hearing rumblings about a true Siri competitor from Google for months, and it seems to have been given the rather pedestrian label of Google Assistant (a big downgrade from Star Trek shout-out "Majel"). A new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that Google is investing heavily in semantic search, leveraging the power of its unrivaled data collection to power both its desktop and Android search engines. Google search executive Amit Singhal confirmed that semantic are a big part of their latest initiatives.
Whether or not you like Apple or the iPhone; the Siri search assistant in the latest versions of the iPhone is a very cool feature. Google is gearing up to fight Siri and some of the cool local recommendation and other features that the AI assistant touts on the iPhone 4S. To help beef up the Google arsenal in local recommendations Google has plunked down the cash needed to buy up Clever Sense.
