Apple Hires Amazon's Head of Search for Siri Help

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Apple apparently hired Bill Stasior to shape up Siri.

Stasior previously ran Amazon's search engine since the departure of Udi Manber and held the position of president and CEO of A9.com. Prior to co-founding A9, Stasior was a key executive for at DEC's search engine AltaVista.

Apple did not reply questions on Bill Stasior's work at the company, though it's believed that he will be helping to run the Siri effort.

Apple's Siri is clearly in need of some talent as the virtual assistant has lost some of its original appeal and has not improved much since its original introduction with iOS 5. The company is apparently replacing Siri's founder Adam Cheyer, who came to Apple as part of his Siri's acquisition by Apple in 2008.

Cheyer left Apple in June, following Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus, who left in October of last year. Cheyer is currently listed as an advisor for Change.org.

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Wolfgang Gruener
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • deadlockedworld
    Good. Siri is an idiot most of the time. Understands very few of my requests.
    Reply
  • willard
    You know, I may be the only one here, but I really don't care very much about natural language search. It's easy enough to use a few key phrases. For example, on Android phones (which have had voice command for years, Apple was certainly not the first to the party) you can say "Navigate to..." and give it a destination. Being able to talk to my phone like it's a person doesn't add much for me, because I can already control the phone just fine with my voice.

    Natural language search is a very important topic of research, but it's simply not ready for primetime and the alternatives that have been on the market for years work just fine.
    Reply
  • I like the fact that I can ask her to call me " my name" and she says " I did not find "my name" in my contacts" so I had to add myself to my contacts. pretty sad honestly.
    Reply
  • glasssplinter
    Crapple's innovation at its' finest. Hire everyone from other companies that could do it right, then claim you did it first.
    Reply
  • greghome
    deadlockedworldGood. Siri is an idiot most of the time. Understands very few of my requests.You should try Iris on Android, even less useful with every new update for some reason. :/
    Reply
  • alidan
    willardYou know, I may be the only one here, but I really don't care very much about natural language search. It's easy enough to use a few key phrases. For example, on Android phones (which have had voice command for years, Apple was certainly not the first to the party) you can say "Navigate to..." and give it a destination. Being able to talk to my phone like it's a person doesn't add much for me, because I can already control the phone just fine with my voice.Natural language search is a very important topic of research, but it's simply not ready for primetime and the alternatives that have been on the market for years work just fine.
    look at dragon... when you have a good mic, holy crap is that a wonderful program... if i had more ram i would keep it open 24/7... but i just dont have that kind of ram.
    Reply
  • freiheitner
    Oh that's a mistake. Amazon's search is terrible! Should have gotten NewEgg's search people.
    Reply
  • lamorpa
    People would even be happy if SIRI didn't have such piss poor speech recognition, let alone brain dead interpretation.
    Reply
  • bllue
    Let this gimmick die. No one even uses it
    Reply
  • Solandri
    alidanlook at dragon... when you have a good mic, holy crap is that a wonderful program... if i had more ram i would keep it open 24/7... but i just dont have that kind of ram.The crazy thing is Dragon is half the app it could be. The original creators lost control of it and its patents through an investment fluke, basically resulting in them being prevented from continuing to improve it because they'd be violating their own patents (which were held by the company).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html
    Reply