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Cortana vs Google Now: Battle of the virtual assitants [Video]
There is a new kid on the block, and her name is Cortana. Earlier this morning Microsoft released Windows Phone 8.1 for developers around the world. Included in that update is their new virtual assistant that they hope will compete with the likes of Google Now and Siri. Google has a huge head start when it comes to providing information to users, but Microsoft is not a company to take lightly. How does Cortana stack up against the mighty Google Now? Let’s take a look.
Pre-Search Information
The main feature that makes Google Now so great is all the information it can give you before you ask for it. Cortana also has this feature, which puts it in direct competition with Google. Cortana can give you information about news you’re interested in, sports scores, local weather, traffic, nearby events, and more. Google Now can do all of these things as well. They both have useful information at the ready, but it’s displayed in very different ways.
Google Now displays things in cards. If you want to adjust how an item is displayed you tap the three dots icon in the top right. If you want to remove a card from your list you just swipe it away. Cortana separates things into categories with separation between them. You can tap a button to “see more” or “hide” the information. Whether or not you like the design of one more than the other will depend on your personal taste. If you like Android’s design you will definitely be favoring Google Now.
Voice Search
The biggest consumer-facing feature of these two services is the voice search. This is the one thing that people just love to play around with. Siri is playful and funny, but she doesn’t provide much useful information. Google Now and Cortana can do a lot more for you. They help you get things done quickly and easily by just talking. In order to test the voice search for these two services I created a list of 14 common questions you might ask.
- What is the forecast for this weekend in Boston?
- Set a reminder to feed the dog at 5pm
- set an alarm for 8:30 am
- Play Daft Punk
- where is the nearest McDonald’s
- find me coffee nearby
- Open Twitter
- how far is it to cheddar’s?
- when is my next appointment
- show me nearby events
- show me photos of bunnies
- Did the tigers win yesterday?
- when do the red wings play?
- How old is Barack Obama?
As you will see in the video posted above, the results to these questions were fairly similar. In some cases Google Now was faster, in other cases Cortana was faster. The information given was also a bit different since they are using different search engines. One thing Cortana was better at was helping you take action after the initial query. For example, you can just say “yes” to setting a reminder instead of tapping an extra button. At the end of the day I was able to get the answer I needed 9/10 from both services. You should have no trouble with either one.
Surprisingly, Microsoft has done an excellent job with Cortana in this initial beta release. They have already been able to do almost everything that Google has done. The battle for virtual assistants just got very interesting. Microsoft will continue to improve Cortana as time goes on, as will Google with search. There is one thing that we can know for sure from this comparisons: Siri is in trouble.
Google bought a company that makes solar drones, and we’re officially freaked out
It isn’t unheard of for some of Google’s acquisitions to come with a bit of unease, but their latest one probably takes the biggest piece of cake of them all. The Mountain View company has confirmed the purchase of New Mexico-based Titan Aerospace, a company that specializes in creating high-altitude drone technology for use in… whatever.
The company is said to begin interfacing with the team working on Project Loon, which is a vision that Google hopes can bring balloon-carried high-speed WiFi transmitters and deliver widespread connectivity for the masses. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Google could work with Makani, an internal team tasked with researching and developing airborne wind-powered turbines for more efficient energy.
All of this sounds quite fine — in fact, it’s all kind of cool — but there’s one other harrowing thing Google could be looking to do with their new-found knowledge of drone technology. It’s said that the drones could likely be put to use for purposes of gathering and collecting data, likely to help improve Google’s mapping business.
Google already employs the likes of self-driving cars and camera-equipped airplanes to take snapshots of the world for use in Google Maps, but Titan’s drones could bring a flexible, modular system that does all of that and more. That “more” could including anything from atmospheric sensors for recording climate data to delivering aforementioned airborne WiFi to countries that aren’t well-equipped for hard-line access.
The drones themselves aren’t your Amazon Drone Delivery or consumer-focused Parrot AR Drone-sized pieces of equipment, either — the smallest drone Titan makes is slightly larger than a Boeing 767, which is a passenger cruiser that can seat anywhere between 181 and 375 people. Let that sink into your brain for just a second.
Of course, Google’s intentions probably aren’t as scary as our brains will make them out to be, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the culmination of all these different pieces (Google has made a strong push to acquire robotics and AI companies recently) ends up being.
New Google app icons rumored to be on the way (and someone’s already recreated them)
It appears Google could be readying upgrades to their mobile apps to bring us a fresh set of icons for their services. The original story talks of a project “Moonshine,” which would simply bring updated app icons for various Google apps.
Whether these icons are used on the web, on Android or both is something yet to be determined, but here they are in all their leaked glory:
The supposed changes offer a more flat style than we’re used to, which is an element of design that’s certain to get more popular with Apple’s latest changes in iOS 7. The icons aren’t so dramatically different that they’re unrecognizable, but they’re different enough that people using their phones every day will take notice.
Whether it’s pleasing to your eye is up to you. When should we expect them? Not sure, though we’d bet a bit of money that Google would make the change whenever they bring their redesigned Android apps we’ve been hearing about lately.
And here’s a fun little corkscrew to all of this for you icon pack makers: someone has already recreated these rumored icons in vector format, giving you high-quality versions of them that you can use for whatever you see fit.
The files are offered up in Adobe Illustrator format, so it’s going to take a tad bit of elbow grease to get them up and running in an icon pack. It’s just too bad Android doesn’t have built-in support for changing icons (though there are a few custom launchers out there that are up to the task). Let us know if any of you handy developers or themers do something with the icons below!
[via Reddit]
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