iPhone News Updated

Google pulls “Siri for Android” app from Android Market

Google pulls “Siri for Android” app from Android Market

A number of wannabe apps that try to mimic the capabilities of Apple’s Siri on the iPhone 4S have shown up in the Android Market over the past few months, but none went so far as to appropriate the Siri name and app icon - except for one.

Thankfully, Google has caught on to the infringing app, the so-called “Siri for Android,” and has pulled it from the Market.

The Siri for Android app not only took Apple’s copyrighted name, but it also used the same microphone over a metal coin design for its icon as Apple uses for Siri on the iPhone 4S. While it had the appearance of offering a new service to the Android platform, all it actually did was open the Voice Actions service that is built into every Android phone. Apparently, about 1,000 people downloaded the app before Google was able to remove it from the market. Google went ahead and banned the developer from the Market as well.

Shortly after Apple announced that Siri would be a feature of the iPhone 4S, an app called Iris hit the Android Market that claimed to offer many of the same conversational qualities that drew users to Siri. While the Iris app was not infringing on Apple’s trademarks in any way, it also did not offer quite the same experience as the true Siri service. Rumors have been circulating for the past few weeks that Google itself is working on a competitor to Siri that will be implemented natively into future versions of Android, so it may not be that long before Android owners won’t have to resort to weak imitations in order to get their voice assistant fix.

[Thanks: http://www.mobileburn.com]

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