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Report: Google Assistant is better than Siri in every tested category – except one

Is Google Assistant better than Siri? This exhaustive report says "Yes," in all tested categories except for one significant outlier.
By
July 25, 2018
TL;DR
  • In a new experiment, Google Assistant beat Siri, Alexa, and Cortana in all tested categories — except for one.
  • That one category is curiously smartphone voice commands, in which Siri emerged the victor.
  • However, Google Assistant is far and away the overall winner, head-and-shoulders above the competition.

Back in April, we shared some test results with you from a marketing company that set out to answer a simple question: which is the most efficient virtual assistant? The results painted a clear picture that Google Assistant is the best.

Now, we have new results from a different company – Loup Ventures – that comes to the same conclusion: Google Assistant trounces Siri, Cortana, and Alexa to emerge the clear victor.

The five categories Loup Ventures tested were Local, Commerce, Navigation, Information, and Command. The team asked the same 800 questions to all four assistants using the respective smartphone applications (no smart speakers this time).

Here are example queries for each category:

  • Local – Where is the nearest coffee shop?
  • Commerce – Can you order me more paper towels?
  • Navigation – How do I get to uptown on the bus?
  • Information – Who do the Twins play tonight?
  • Command – Remind me to call Steve at 2:oo P.M. today.
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As we said, Google dominated the competition in each category – all except for one. Surprisingly, Siri bested Google Assistant when it came to smartphone control commands. Google Assistant correctly performed voice commands like “Play music” and “Turn the volume down” only 76 percent of the time, as compared to Siri’s 90 percent success rate.

Check out the chart below for the full results:

The fact that Google Assistant lost to Siri in this category is strange, as both Siri and Google Assistant are baked-in on the testing phones used for this experiment (an iPhone running iOS 11.4 and a Google Pixel XL, respectively). One would assume the results would be more equal, but it appears that’s not the case.

But as you can see from the graph, this category is the only time Google Assistant didn’t absolutely crush the competition. In fact, not only is Google better than Siri, Cortana, and Alexa in nearly every function, but Assistant is improving at an incredibly fast rate, as compared to Loup Ventures’ previous results from April 2017.

Check out the chart below for improvement rates (Alexa wasn’t tested in Loup Ventures’ previous experiment):

With improvement rates across the board pretty high, one can’t help but wonder how soon it will be before virtual assistants will be able to answer pretty much anything you ask. It also begets the question of how long it will be before all assistants are equally as good as another.

You can read Loup Ventures’ full report by clicking the button below.