Amazon May Be Readying Its Own Voice Assistant

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I think we’ve all seen just what happens when you combine voice-activated searches with media. We’ve seen it with Microsoft’s push to add Kinect and Bing to its Xbox Live systems, we’ve seen it in Apple’s contemplation of a television powered by Siri, and now we’re getting what may well prove another such look at things with Amazon’s recent purchase of a company that handles voice control systems.

Amazon’s purchase of Yap, which reportedly took place two months ago, would give them control over a company that had been developing systems that could transcribe spoken words into text. Originally, it was geared toward teenagers who did a lot of text messaging, but in Amazon’s hands it looks like it may turn into something much bigger.

The current word suggests that this may well be the start of an Amazon version of Siri, especially with the upcoming full release of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. And if they use it the way Microsoft has been using it, and the way Apple was reputed to be interested in using it, they may have a nice killer app on their hands.

Basically, we all know that Amazon’s strength isn’t in hardware, but in content provision. They’ve got a whole lot of media you can access, or browse through for future ordering, at any time. You couple a voice control system on to that, plus possibly a set-top box (or even just give the Kindle Fire an HDMI out port), and you’ve got a very potent little piece of home entertainment hardware. You’d thus be able to combine Amazon’s media library (be it Amazon Prime or Amazon Instant Video, both of which have a pretty healthy array of titles under their bailiwick) with a voice control system that lets you search the database by ordering it searched.

A bit of a reach, I know, but a very interesting possible direction, especially considering more than a few folks’ belief that the Kindle Fire isn’t really meant to compete with the iPad 2 and the like so much as complement them by offering up a mostly media driven product with a few extra bells and whistles.

So what do you guys think here? Is this the beginning of Amazon’s entrant into the voice-controlled assistant arena? Will they be putting their media weight behind this to augment the Kindle Fire? Or will they do something else entirely? No matter what you think, we want to hear from you, so head on down to the comments section below and tell us what you think!