Amazon Alexa vs. Google Assistant vs. Siri

Whether you're starting a smart home, or you love hands free tech - choosing your virtual assistant can be a difficult decision. Amazon, Google and Apple are tech giants, with some of the most recognisable virtual and home assistants out there. 

While it's easy to get complacent with the virtual assistant your phone came with, starting up a smart home or grabbing a smart speaker is another chance to try something new.

If you're looking for the best virtual assistant for your needs, we've pitted them against each other to make your lives easier.

Jump straight to:

• Amazon Alexa
• Google Assistant
• Siri
• The Verdict

Amazon Alexa

Background

Alexa is Amazon’s virtual assistant, which pretty much means that it’s a disconnected voice, which performs actions based on your questions and commands. 

When you say the wake word, “Alexa” you are telling that service to start listening to your voice and follow through with your commands.

Amazon designed Alexa’s artificial intelligence to mimic real conversations, but it is actually a cloud based service that exists to perform specific tasks.

The assistant was released in Australia in 2018, and sold around 798,000 Echo products locally in the first year.

Skills

The list of what Alexa can do is staggering, and continues to grow every day. Amazon dubbed Alexa’s smart capabilities as skills, which were created to allow users to personalise their Alexa experience. 

Alexa currently has thousands of skills which can be enabled, and connected to your accounts and subscription services. But since some of these skills are created by third parties, they can be hit and miss.

Even without these additional skills, Alexa has plenty of out of the box basics, and Amazon developed skills to help you out. Users can set timers, search the web for information, play tunes through Amazon Music, check traffic, listen to the news, and set up personalised routines.

Intelligence

You can’t control a smart home without some smarts, and Alexa has it in spades. Moreover, Amazon has repeatedly expressed its long term commitment to improving the voice platform, which means that Alexa is always getting smarter.

Nothing can beat Amazon’s compatibility with smart devices. Alexa works with over 100,000 smart home devices, with that number only destined to get bigger. Of the 9,500 brands that work with the Alexa ecosystem, 300 of these hold the Works with Alexa certification, which is the Amazon stamp of approval. These products have been earmarked to integrate seamlessly with Alexa, but the other thousands of brands will still work - they may just not have as reliable skills in the database.

Personalisation is a big one for virtual assistants - you want to be able to speak as yourself, not as a rigid version of you in your own home. Amazon gets that and allows an array of voice personalisation, especially when creating routines. So with some time and just a little bit of effort, you can create a truly personal experience.

It’s important not to discount the personality aspects of a home assistant. While your virtual assistant is, for all intents and purposes a detached voice, its quips and easy repartee makes speaking to a box feel more comfortable. Alexa is more conversational than Google Home, but slightly less so than Siri. I’d equate chatting to Alexa like talking to your Mum when someone else is around - it's going to act just a little bit more formal than you’d expect.

Google Assistant

Background

Google Assistant is exactly that, Google's virtual assistant. Virtual assistants are a form of Artificial Intelligence, which mimics real conversation while carrying out commands and tasks when prompted via voice control.

When it was first launched, the platform was an extension of Google's voice control software Google Now. This version used to pull important information about you like, where you work and your favourite sports teams in order to personalise your Google experience. While Google Now is now dead, it lives on in a more intelligent form.

While Google Assistant isn't as conversational as say Amazon's Alexa, the tech does it's job to put you at ease with your new robot friend.

Actions

If we were to list everything that Google Assistant can do, you’d get carpal tunnel from scrolling. Google's so called, Actions are constantly expanding with more added each day.

As opposed to Alexa, Google has a myriad of out of the box Actions which users can jump on straight away. Some still require connected apps or devices, but you won’t need to activate them you’ll just need to know the command. Google claims that they have more than one million Actions, compared to the estimated 50,000 skills on Alexa. 

Google has made it easy for developers to adapt to Google Assistant, with a simple step by step process available for creating Actions through the Google Developer platform. Australians have taken notice, with Google dominating 68% of the smart speaker market share a year after Amazon’s release.

Intelligence

Google Assistant has some pretty smart backing from, well, Google. The platform can access Google’s massive stores of data, and connect automatically to compatible apps automatically,  to the surprise and delight of users. Without having to tell your Google Assistant anything new, they can let you know about appointments stemming from your Gmail, or see your usual commute through Maps. 

While Google doesn’t have the mass of compatible devices that Amazon does, the 5,000 devices that work along with Google is more than ample to set up a smart home. Every one of the 400 brands are certified to work with your Home Assistant, and you can rest assured that their commands will work because Google has some solid quality control.

Personality wise, the Google Home Assistant is lacking. Yes it tells some good jokes, but the conversational nature is way behind Siri and Alexa. It is a bit of a trade off, but Google is committed to improving this, so as time goes on Assistant might become easier to hold a conversation with.

Siri

Background

Siri is synonymous with Apple products, and was originally released as iOS feature feature in October, 2011, making it the first widely available virtual assistant, and arguably kick starting the trend of talking to your phone. 

Siri is the most widely used voice assistant on mobile phones, with 41.4% of Australians who actually use their virtual assistant preferring it. However, Apple hasn't done as well when it comes to smart speakers. 

Apple only has 5.5% of the smart speaker market share in Australia, as opposed to Google’s 62% and Amazon’s 14%. Apple’s HomePod does however have a much higher starting price than the competition. 

Siri Skills

Functionality is a little bit more complicated when it comes to Siri; it varies drastically depending on what device you're using it on. For example, Siri on your iPhone or iPad can tap into third party apps like Uber to order you a ride, but that's not possible if you're chatting to Siri on your HomePod. 

On a HomePod, Siri is essentially restricted to Apple's 300 native commands. That's pretty limiting. Siri won't get you a ride, order you a pizza, or play tunes from anything other than Apple Music.

Apple has been more liberal with allowing developers to integrate with Siri on iPhone and iPad in recent years however, so hopefully we'll see similar progress made with HomePod. Especially given that Apple is tipped to announce a second generation speaker this year. 

Intelligence

Siri is smart in some ways, but oh so dumb in others. Much of this depends on the platform where you are communicating from. What can be enabled on an iPhone, as opposed to a HomePod or Apple TV are vastly different, which is Siri’s downfall.

Unlike Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa users need to be acutely aware of the limitations that different platforms create for Siri. If you were hoping that your HomePod would be just like talking to your iPhone, you’re going to be disappointed. There are still levels of discrepancies between the devices.

As for compatibility to other devices, you will get the usual Apple treatment. The HomePod and Siri can only access around 100 brands, compared to the thousands you can use with Alexa or the hundreds with Google Assistant.

Verdict

Picking your robot butler is never an easy decision, there are pros and cons to every virtual assistant out there, but currently Google Assistant is the clear winner.

Google’s popularity hasn’t stemmed from nothing, with the backing of Google data, and a huge range of compatibility across devices, it’s easy to see why we’re leaning towards trusty Google. 

Alexa is another strong contender, but response accuracy and out of the box skills let it down. If you’re looking for a virtual assistant to act as a smart home hub, Alexa feels like a clear choice with the sheer volume of compatible devices. But, for now, with a significantly lower response accuracy than its Google counterpart, Alexa might not suit your needs.

While Siri wouldn’t be the assistant of choice for your smart home for lots of reasons, it has obvious potential which is already evident across a range of Apple products. But for now, you may just have to wait until it is ready to show its true colours in the smart home spectrum.

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