Google Rumored to be Preparing Competition for Siri Later This Year

One of the big selling points for the Apple iPhone 4S was Siri, the virtual assistant.

Apple laid on the Siri advertising thick over the 1st quarter the 4S was available and it seemed to work with the company selling 37 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2012.

Never one to be outdone, Google has been working on a similar program rumored to be simply called "Assistant". The word is that the program will have access to Google's search engine and also integrate services such as Gmail and Google+.

Also, Google is much more app and developer friendly than the notoriously closed iOS so there may be lots of Google Adroid apps to take advantage of it as well.

There is no rumored release date, but you've got to think that if the word is starting to leak out, it can't be far away. My bet is we'll see it this summer.