Battle of the Digital Assistants - Siri, Google Now, Cortana

Ever since their inception, virtual digital assistants have been an integral part of smartphones and have proven to be quite helpful. They are very handy when you are unable to operate your phone with your own hands. Many leading organizations are using these digital assistants with the help of artificial intelligence and voice-activated commands in many of their own mobile and desktop applications.

There has been a constant debate about which digital assistant is the best among Apple's 'Siri', Google's 'Google Now', or Windows' 'Cortana'. The battle and comparison of Siri vs Google Now vs Cortana has been going on for a while now. So which one is the best digital assistant available today? We have laid down some points to determine this and try to resolve this debate.

Siri vs Cortana vs Google Now

Like them or hate them, mobile digital assistants have become an integral part of our lives and the devices we use. The debate about which is the best digital assistant available today has been going on since a long time. Here we have listed the different digital assistants and some of their features -

• Siri

  

  Developed by Apple Inc. Siri has been a part of iOS ever since iOS 5 was launched way back in 2011. Siri had little basic functionality initially and supported information delivery for events such as sports, weather, and messaging. Siri has grown tremendously after that and now has a large plethora of functionalities and also supports third-party integrations.

  Using its voice control technology, Siri can now be instructed to send e-mails, find contacts, open apps, post updates to social networking websites, etc. Integration with other apps such as Apple Calendar or clock is also much easier for Siri as compared to other digital assistants.

• Cortana

  

  Developed by Microsoft for Windows devices, Cortana is a very useful and helpful digital assistant. Cortana can be instructed to send texts, set reminders, recognize music, find places to eat, keep a check on the calendar, etc.With the new updates which arrived along with Windows 10, the capabilities of Cortana have reached new heights.

  Cortana can now read your e-mails, search files by context, and also suggest some useful information based on the data it collects. Cortana allows you type your requests or questions when you don't want to speak out loud as well, thereby making it a little more interactive than Siri.

• Google Now

  

  Google Now is pretty different from other digital assistants such as Siri and Cortana. It is designed keeping the general audience in mind. Google Now can be asked to find directions to the nearest eating joint, or check the weather, send mails, texts, etc.

  If allowed to do so, Google Now can browse through your profile and search history and provide results which may suit your likings. Its integration with the world's most popular search engine makes it one of the most useful digital assistants available today.

Battle of the Digital Assistants: Who Wins?

All of these products have advantages and limitations of their own and can defeat each other in some aspects while being crowned a winner in some segment or the other. The truth is that the race is much closer than most people would expect, and with continuing improvements being made in all 3 digital assistants, combined with the presence of serious new competitors such as Alexa from Amazon, this race would only intensify in the near future.

Here is a table which helps one to easily understand the different capabilities of the three major digital assistants available today -

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