Google has had the in-house voice technology for ages — it hired Mike Cohen, the guy who started Nuance. But ‘Assistant’ is set to go beyond Siri in many ways, most importantly in that the search company will retain complete control of all the layers involved.

Putative launch date by fourth quarter 2012.

Taylor Wimberly: "I wrote about Google’s response to Apple’s Siri voice assistant several months ago and over the last couple weeks I received further details about the secret project. For starters it is codenamed Majel, which comes from Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, better known as the voice of the Federation Computer from Star Trek.

"Majel is an evolution of Google’s Voice Actions that is currently available on most Android phones with the addition of natural language processing. Where Voice Actions required you to issue specific commands like “send text to…” or “navigate to…”, Majel will allow you to perform actions in your natural language similar to how Siri functions."

The arms race continues.

Seems that Siri copes with Australian accents a lot better than Microsoft's Tellme. But the point made here is a fair one: Microsoft should quit pretending that Tellme is equal to Siri. Just say you're going to make your own even better, and get on with it. But old habits die hard. (Via @Carniphage.)

"Point 1: You need to be able to launch a voice app like this quickly. The iPhone 4S has a leg up by allowing you to long-press the home button to launch Siri at any time. Simple, quick. With Cluzee, you need a home screen shortcut, which means having to wake and unlock the phone first. If the app's not yet in memory, it takes several seconds to launch -- an eternity for this sort of thing. It really has to be faster. (And it is, so long as Cluzee remains loaded.)

"On to Point 2: Cluzee understood our tests some of the time, but not all of the time. And even in our abbreviated use, it seemed to struggle more than it should. That ties into Point 3: Returning results for local pizza locations took so long we thought the app had hung on us (force closes are not uncommon at this point). And opening applications through Cluzee took too many steps. (Us: "Open Google Maps." Cluzee: "Which application do you want me to open?" Grrrrrr.)"

Android Central are biased, though, right?

"After last week’s iPhone 4S unveiling, Siri was one of the most talked-about features. With Siri, the iPhone 4S will be able to answer just about anything you ask it, from the weather report to nearby points of interest. It can also read messages and notifications aloud and even let you dictate messages of your own instead of relying on the phone’s on-screen keyboard."

Includes Google Search, natch. Also Vlingo.