Siri Vs. Google Now Vs. Cortana

Apple's Siri, Google's Google Now, and Windows Phone's Cortana are the three voices of the most popular cell phone services out there right now. Each one is constantly improving and can be deemed extremely helpful at times but what are the differences between them and how do you determine which ones is better than the other? 

In an article I read (here) it states that each of the three devices were given an equal number of voice queries to respond to . Google's Google Now won by a long shot having an 88% success rate of having the answers answered correctly while Apple's Siri was next in line with a surprisingly low 53% and Windows Phone's Cortana was at the bottom of the barrel with a shocking 40%. 

A research study was carried out between two students (location unknown) and they ask a few simple questions for each of the devices. If you would like to see the video of the presentation, please click here. Beginning with Siri, Cortana, and then Google Now, some of the following questions were asked. 

1. What is the tallest mountain in the world?
1. Siri response was that she would "search for that" and provided a link to follow with the accurate response, being Mt. everest. 
2. Cortana responded with the same answer but spoke the answer directly to the consumer so they could utilize the hands free response. 
3. Google Now provided the answer to the question along with more information such as; location, height, and several other larger mountains in the world with the same type of information provided for the initial question. 
2. What does the Fox say?
1. Siri, whom is a smart-ass as we all know, had little to nothing to say about the inquiry the students had. Since I have Siri, I asked her myself to which she responded: 

                      1. A little vague but nevertheless she came up with a more descriptive answer than in   the study.

                      2. Cortana was asked next and her system responds with the same type of answer that I received from my inquiry but also provided some more information like the lyrics. 

                       3. Google Now was the most descriptive in her response by providing the link to the   Youtube video and also singing it to the user. 

         

A few other things to look at are; Voice recognition, and Helpfulness

For voice recognition it appears that Cortana and Google Now will lead in this category because they are built to understand fully what you say, and similar to autocorrect while texting, they will match what you are trying to say as closely as they can. Meanwhile, Siri goes off what she thinks she heard and sticks with it and mosre often than not, it leads to frustration and inaccurate results. 

For helpfulness we will, again, compare the three assistants and see which is more helpful. First, let's clarify the meaning of helpfulness that is trying to be portrayed here. While simple tasks like making an appointment, placing a call, or setting an alarm are useful things for an assistant to be able to do, we want to see helpfulness as being able to go above and beyond and provide us enough information to thoroughly understand what we are asking. 

With the exception of Siri, who is not helpful whatsoever, both Google Now and Cortana provide information that is helpful to us. Although Google Now is a little bit more in depth by providing maps, directions, websites, and phone numbers, Cortana still stands a chance by providing some information.

In conclusion, it's really up to the consumer which helpful assistant benefits their usage needs more. Personally, I have Siri and she's terrible but because I am an avid Apple user who doesn't want to switch to the Android platform, I'll stick it out.