iOS has had voice control since iOS3. The point of Siri is that it's not voice control, it's that it's 1. better at recognizing speech and 2. stateful/context-based, in that it can take "followup actions" within the context of the previous command
I'm getting sick of this fight of always trying to find who “invented” something. Innovation is not just inventing new concepts, that just doesn't happen that much, it's also using old stuff in new ways or applying it somewhere it hadn't been used before, or twisting it in some other way.
What's conceptually different between Siri and Eliza or the Emacs Doctor? Nothing, but nobody else put it in a phone as a way to control it when everybody was using just voice commands. That's innovation – which Google dismissed, by the way http://gigaom.com/apple/googles-andy-rubin-doesnt-think-siri....
Apple usually gets away with waiting 2 years before they release an alternative to something Android has, but they get a pass because "they waited to make it better". While Android doesn't get the same defense even if they waited a few months. Do you really think they've started working on this just 2 months ago? A Google X employee said on Reddit that they've been working on AI that can beat the Turist test for a long time - and it already beats 93% of the Turing tests.
http://androidandme.com/2011/12/news/more-info-on-googles-ma...