This one weird Siri feature turned me into a Bing user
Even Spider-Man couldn't make Bing cool. So when Apple introduced Bing integration into its Siri voice assistant for iOS 7, I wasn't exactly thrilled by the change. Bing is basically the search engine equivalent of the sixth Doctor, loud clothes and all.
Sure, Apple included a Google workaround for Siri for die-hards.
If you wanted to use Google to search for specific terms, you can Google those phrases. For example, you say "Siri, Google fezzes."
It's pretty unsatisfying. This just tells Siri to open a new Safari window with a Google search. You lose the cool (and I use that term in its proper bow tie sense) integrated result on the Siri dialog screen.
Now, after months of using the latest Siri, I'm publicly outting myself. I like those integrated results and I don't care that Bing, saddle shoes and all, has joined Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia as a primary Siri information source. Bing's results are... just fine.
Sure, I'm not so far gone to reason that I am using Bing as a verb (which you can do; just say "Siri, Bing TARDIS") because there are, after all, standards. But I'm enjoying the slick new integration with web results tied directly into the dialog.
If one weren't a search engine snob, one probably wouldn't even notice that those results involved Bing at all. (I specifically exclude the Duck Duck Go die-hards from this write-up. The DDG folk are basically the rabid libertarians of the search engine world. That's an entirely different creature from Google snobbery.)
Bing is doing my searches, and it's doing them well. And, as shocking as it is to discover, Siri has made me a regular Bing user.
Whodathought?
Steven Sande and Erica Sadun have been working on the third edition of Talking to Siri, the book that covers all the ins and outs of everyone's favorite digital assistant.
