Marques Brownlee put together the video below, taking Siri and Google Assistant, side by side, through their paces. The set of questions Marques chose were wide in range, but not necessarily definitive. They poked at the boundary of what each assistant did well and poorly, without digging further to find the cliff for each.

There’s a lot to learn watching this. First, it’s clear that Siri holds her own against Google Assistant, despite all the naysaying out there. Neither is perfect, both are useful.

My sense is that both assistants are tree driven, able to answer questions that are within their tree of knowledge. But one cliff for both assistants is context. For example, Marques asked Siri:

Who is the President of the United States?

In response, Siri turned to a web search. Clearly, this particular piece of knowledge, the answer to a relatively obvious question, is not in Siri’s tree.

When Marques followed with:

How tall is he?

Siri, clearly missing the context, produced a web search for this question:

How tall is United States?

To some, this might seem dumb. But this is really a missing branch in Siri’s tree of knowledge.

When Marques asked:

Did the Clippers win?

Siri replied with the score of the previous night’s pre-season game, while Google Assistant replied with the score from the final Clippers game from last season. Clearly, the Google tree of basketball knowledge was missing a branch.

Another example: Marques asked:

Show me some pictures of German Shepherds.

Siri showed web images, Google Assistant found a single YouTube video. Continuing:

Show me pictures of cats.

Siri showed web images of cats, Google Assistant showed pictures of cats from Marques Google Photos collection.

One conclusion you might draw is that Google Assistant knows how to find cats in your photos and Siri does not.

But if Marques has asked:

Show me my pictures of cats.

Siri would have done the same as Google Assistant. So part of the difference, of getting the most from your assistant, is learning the language of your assistant, learning how to lead your assistant appropriately.

I loved this video. To me, it shows how much has been achieved by each team, how much power each assistant brings to the table. I use Siri all the time. While there are certainly moments of frustration, they almost always stem from the form of my question. As long as I stay in Siri’s wheelhouse, I get a tremendous amount of value from Siri.