Future of search is named Siri

If you're lucky enough to receive an iPhone 4S as a gift this holiday season, you should be very pleased. Nevertheless if you're Google, you should be very worried.

Search is one of the most common things we use our computers for every day. Google is far and away the market leader in search research. Actually, using Google and finding something online have become synonymous, so much so that "googling" has become a verb in day in day out vernacular.

Search engine

And Siri is more than a search engine. It's more like a mobile digital assistant, or the modern version of a butler hidden in your smartphone. For instance, it understands how to set events on your calendar - including notifying you of meeting conflicts as needed, or reminding you of your father-in-law's birthday. It can set your alarm and tell you the weather forecast for the weekend.

Siri is a huge step up from clumsy programs like Microsoft's "Clippy" of several years ago, nevertheless it's not perfect. It doesn't always understand what you say. There have been amusing reports of problems for people with Australian accents. And Siri doesn't always know the answers, in which case it offers a Web search - using Google - to find them. Yet it will improve over time. It does learn your voice accent and characteristics the more you use it. And Apple will likely continue to integrate more services into Siri in the cloud, resulting in improved accuracy and functionality.

The iPhone 4S

Siri is available only in the iPhone 4S. But, there are rumors it will be a key element of future interfaces for other Apple products, including the rumored Apple TV.

I have seen the future of search. It's from Apple and it's called Siri. If you're lucky enough to receive an iPhone 4S as a gift this holiday season, you should be very pleased. Nevertheless if you're