What could be more awesome than a voice-activated search engine that knows where you are and tells you where you can find what you're looking for? This is why Apple's Siri has caught on. Unfortunately for Apple, this means that any quirks in the system – even ones that aren't Apple's fault – quickly receive the glare of the press.
Siri, in case you don't know, is an “intelligent personal assistant” that comes with the iPhone 4G, according to Apple. You can tell it “to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more.” If it doesn't understand what you said, it will ask you questions to get more information. One of the application's best selling features is that you can use it to search the web, and you don't need to use keywords; just speak to it naturally.
This doesn't mean, however, that Siri isn't bound by some of the vagaries and conventions of search. That's why there's been a bit of a brouhaha recently over what Siri will and will not find. Danny Sullivan covered it for Search Engine Land, and Stephen Colbert even made fun of the issue on The Colbert Report.
Basically, here's the situation: picture searching for an abortion clinic in New York...and not finding one. In fact, picture standing in front of a Planned Parenthood in New York and not finding it when you ask Siri to look for abortion clinics. That doesn't sound right at all, does it? Unfortunately, that's exactly what Siri does. And there's a reason for that: as Sullivan explains, “It's not because Apple is pro-life. It's because Planned Parenthood doesn't call itself an abortion clinic.”
Google could tell Apple a thing or two about these kinds of scandals. They've dealt with anti-Semitic websites showing up in response to searches for “Jew,” a United States president showing up in response to searches for “miserable failure,” and I won't even discuss what shows up when you search for “Santorum.” In many cases, these quirks have nothing to do with Google itself. The search engine did not engineer the results; rather, they were often artifacts of other people's actions. Google's algorithm acted more like a reporter of opinions (or manipulations), with its search results telling the story.
Unfortunately for both Google and Apple, that story might as well be in code for those who don't understand how search engines work. If they don't explain what might cause particular results – or, in this case, lack of results – many users will jump to their own conclusions. Apple isn't investing a lot of time in explaining what went wrong with the abortion clinic search, however, and that may well hurt them down the line.
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