The war between Apple and Google continues to heat up. The question is has Apple just taken the first steps into the search business?

Apple recently acquired Siri, a mobile “assistant” app maker, as confirmed by a Siri representative.  Siri allows users to perform web searches using voice commands such as “You can ask Siri to find a romantic place for dinner, tell you what’s playing at a local jazz club or get tickets to a movie for Saturday night.”

The software uses GPS and speech recognition technology to translate the commands, applies priopertary search algorithms to decide where to send the request and then interfaces with other services (e.g. Citysearch, OpenTable, Taxi Magic, etc.) to look up the information.

This is a far step from fully entering the search business, but it does place Apple in a better position to control the overall search experience by owning the controlling the access layer for searches on Apple devices.

Read more on the NY Times.

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