Two of the most popular posts, at Tidbits and TechPinions, have made similar points about Siri's potential to disrupt Google's business by replacing cumbersome searches with simple, direct information access. For example, rather than search in your browser for local restaurants, the weather forecast, or stock quotes, Siri can pull that relevant content from its partners' databases. In doing so, iPhone users will bypass Google's website and avoid viewing their ads.
These writers are correct about the threat to search, but they misunderstand the source. Siri only brings together a range of services that have already begun to supplant Google -- in native apps for iOS and other mobile platforms.
Let's take the quest to find a local restaurant for dinner. Siri's partnership with Yelp does present an easier alternative to searching with Google. But that isn't new. Yelp already has a very popular iPhone and iPad application that's easier to use than instigating a search in Mobile Safari. Moreover, Google itself provides local data for the default Maps app provided by Apple.
In other words, Google was already losing the mobile food fight before Siri even entered the arena.
Many other common searches are similarly endangered. Weather apps are some of the most popular in the App Store and they all provide a quick answer to your question. Same with stocks apps, calculator apps, dictionary apps, and even broad-knowledge ones like those for Wolfram Alpha or Wikipedia. No need to surf the web for news when apps exist for all the biggest media sources like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or CNN.
The nice thing about Siri -- besides its natural language recognition -- is that it centralizes some of this information in an easy, voice-activated shortcut.
Truthfully though, the disruption to Google's core business model was already underway every time you tapped your app-filled homescreen.
