SEO Wash-up Monday 19th March

Google Doodle honours George Peabody a philanthropist

On March 16^th Google doodle has paid tribute to George Peabody, a philanthropist who is believed to have given half of his fortune to good causes during his lifetime. Peabody has been credited by Google as being the Father of Modern Philanthropy and often focused his financial gifts on educational initiatives.

Google has chosen the 16^th March to celebrate Peabody because it was on that day in 1867, Peabody received the Congressional Gold Medal for giving $2 million for the advancement of education. Google says that it was an act of generosity made all the more impressive by the fact that he left school at the age of 11. In the Google Doodle blog, they have also said that the $2 million gift Peabody donated in 1867 would be worth $30 million today.

Google shares George Peabody philanthropist on their search engine in the US home page, along with a small selection of its international homepages. George Peabody’s image is not only a Google doodle but is also presented as a mural on the cafeteria wall at George Peabody Elementary School in San Francisco. The artwork was the result of a Doodle team volunteer project at the school as Google said.

Siri may be a liability for Apple

It seems that Siri is putting Apple’s smartphone leadership at risk and this is also having a negative impact on sales of their smart speaker the HomePod, which received a huge amount of negative reviews because of the functionality of it.

A company called ‘The Information’ shared some information about problems with Apple’s management of Siri that has been getting a lot of attention over the past couple of days. As there are a number of specific issues, challenges and problems within Apple surrounding Siri’s management and development, below are a few of the problems:

• The death of Steve Jobs in 2011.
• Limited ongoing improvements, infrequent updates.
• Internal finger-pointing and infighting among groups.
• Challenges tied to integrating new technologies into Siri.
• Lack of vision around Siri’s development such as their HomePod

If we compare Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, then it’s seems that the Google Assistant has by far the greatest breadth and utility. However, Siri isn’t that far behind, most people wouldn’t see Google Assistant as the clear leader if we compare it to Siri but that could change in the near future. Google is aggressively developing the Assistant across hardware devices in a bid for a kind of ecosystem lock-in that was once almost unique to Apple.