Google isn’t a monopoly and Siri is a serious threat: Eric Schmidt

Google has been one of the foremost search engines in the world. Google’s diversification into the mobile, Operating system and social networking was based upon its search engine success.

So, when Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt was quizzed by the US Senate committee in Google being a ‘monopoly’, he responded,” I would disagree that Google is dominant [in search]”

Neowin.com reports,” Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo! Today handle millions more queries than Google did in 2003.” But here is the juicy part” Even in the few weeks since the hearing, Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S.

Apple’s Siri is a significant development—a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search. Android operates on only 34.1 percent while Apple’s iOS runs on 43.1 percent.”

It is currently unclear if Mr. Schmidt said so because he really feels the pinch from Apple or just to save his butt from the senate. We would bet on the latter mostly because of two reasons.

Firstly, his statement contradicts Senior V.P. Andy Rubin’s dismissal of Siri last month, ” I don’t believe that phones should be assistants and doubt whether people should communicate with their phones".

Secondly, market stats tell a totally different tale, Google currently counts for 65 percent of all U.S. Internet searches, 94 percent of the European market and 97 percent of worldwide smartphone searches. All these make it seem that Google is fast approaching the status of a monopoly.

Schmidt seems a smart businessman. By making Siri the center of attention, he wanted to make senators look away from Google itself. His clever wordplay, it seems more of an attempt to rescue Google from under the watchful eye of the senate.