Google Assistant is much smarter than Siri and Alexa

According to a new study, Alexa and Siri are not as good as Google Assistant.

The research company Loup Ventures recently released its biannual report on smartphone-based digital assistants, and the results once again show that Google is way ahead of Amazon and Apple.

To determine which assistant was the best, analysts Gene Munster and Will Thompson asked each of the same 800 questions in five different categories and scored them on comprehension and accuracy.

According to their findings, Google Assistant understood each query asked and answered correctly 92.9% of the time. Siri understood 99.8% of the questions and answered correctly at 83.1%, while Alexa understood 99.9% and answered correctly 79.8% of the time. To put this in perspective, this means that Alexa has answered about 162 questions incorrectly, while Google has been cheated of 57.

Amazon has a clear job to do.

However, if such research helps us track the status of PDAs, they do not give a complete picture. Each assistant has his own abilities, which are not necessarily represented in these categories. And the assistant you use is largely determined by the type of smartphone you own. So, although Alexa and Google Assistant have their own apps for iPhone, you'll be limited to what you can do with them.

But it is still obvious that Google's considerable and sometimes excessive investments in its assistant have paid off. Google has exceeded Alexa and Siri in all but one category. Siri had better control over "orders", such as sending phone calls and text messages or setting reminders. This is also the worst category for Alexa, who answered correctly only at 69%.

What is more surprising is that Amazon's Alexa also fell far behind in the trade category, which could give the impression that Amazon would have any interest in perfecting itself. Alexa was able to answer correctly only 71% of the purchase questions, compared to 92% of Google. (Siri came last with 68% in the category.)

Munster and Thompson note that there are probably very few people who actually use their voice assistants to buy things. But they added that their questions in the trade category were designed with this in mind.

"We think, based on consumer surveys and our experience with PDAs, that the number of consumers making voice-based purchases is insignificant," they write. "We believe that trade-related queries are more focused on finding products and services and finding local businesses than on buying something, and our set of questions bears witness to that."

Their findings also highlight the speed with which all these assistants evolve. The three assistants made significant gains over the past year, according to the report. And more than Alexa, who achieved "the biggest jump in the number of correct answers from one year to another", with a gain of 18 points in the last 13 months.

So, even though Alexa still has a lot of work to do to reduce the gap with Google, it could happen sooner than you think.