In a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said Apple?s Siri is a threat to his company?s search business, especially on mobile. Why is it hard to believe?

Mr. Schmidt clearly understands that Apple influences not only technology but behavioral change among consumers. Its Siri voice-activated search product, which launched with the iPhone 4S, has the potential to change the search landscape and the way consumers look for information. But it likely will not be catching up to Google's search reach anytime soon.

?As I noted this past June, my statement last September was clearly wrong,? Mr. Schmidt writes in his letter. ?The Internet is dynamic and has changed significantly. The importance of social networking to consumers? online experience has changed remarkably?even over the past year. Consumers are looking for answers when they conduct searches online, and social search has become a serious competitor in helping people find those answers online. 

?Similarly, Apple?s Siri is a significant development?a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search,? he said in his letter. ?The tech industry is one of the most competitive and dynamic spaces in the entire economy, with small companies as well as larger companies competing hard against each other in lots of areas. Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information. 

?We compete against a broader array of companies than most people realize, including general search engines (Microsoft?s Bing, Yahoo), specialized search engines (Kayak, Amazon, WebMD, eBay), social networks (Facebook, Twitter), commercial software companies (Apple, Microsoft), mobile apps, and even direct navigation. The Internet is incredibly competitive, and new forms of accessing information are being utilized every day.

Siri is Apple?s entry point into the search business. But at the moment it does not have an effect on Google.

Mobile search marketing spend accounts for just 5 percent of total SEM budget, according to Efficient Frontier. This number could grow to about 10 percent by the end of the year. 

Ninety-eight percent of these dollars spent on mobile search go to Google. 

With such a huge stake in the mobile search arena it is going to take a lot to knock Google off its mobile search throne. So, Siri may be a long-term threat to Google, but nothing in the near future.

So why is Mr. Schmidt saying this?

It could be to get regulators to believe that Google is not monopolizing the search arena. 

Google has had a myriad of antitrust issues with regard to its position in the search space. 

If one would compare Mr. Schmidt?s letter to what he said just one year ago, it is obvious his tune has suddenly changed. 

In September 2010, Mr. Schmidt said he did not consider Facebook or Apple competitive threats. He said Google?s biggest competition is Bing. 

?History shows that popular technology is often supplanted by entirely new models,? Mr. Schmidt said in his letter. ?Even in the few weeks since the hearing, Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S. 

?As one respected technology site reported: ?Everyone keeps insisting that Apple will eventually get into the search engine business. Well they have. But not in the way that everyone was thinking. Siri is their entry point,?? he said in his letter. 

?Another commentator has described Siri more simply as intended to be a ?Google killer.??