Apple’s voice-operated virtual assistant Siri seems so engrained with iOS culture at this point that it’s difficult to imagine it as anything else. Despite how things ended up, apparently at one point there was some serious interest in an Android-based Siri, which Verizon was working to bring to its family of Droid smartphones.

The Huffington Post has an exhaustive look it’s put together at the development of Siri, from its roots in a Defense Department project, to the service we now know today. It tells the tale of the short-lived stand-alone iOS app, which quickly caught the attention of Steve Jobs himself and led to Apple acquiring the company. Before the iOS app was even out, though, Verizon had reportedly already signed-on to feature Siri on its Androids.

That deal was inked back in the fall of 2009, but after Apple snatched-up Siri in 2010, it forced the breaking of that agreement. From the sounds of things, Verizon was hugely excited about Siri’s potential, and had even created some unaired commercials highlighting the service on its Droid devices. Those will now likely never see the light of day, but it’s still fascinating to consider the cross-platform Siri we never got to know. If Siri had arrived on Android, would we ever see the emergence of Google Now?

Source: Huffington Post
Via: phoneArena