In two separate interviews, Google Android chief Andy Rubin and Microsoft Windows Phone President Andy Lees both had negative things to say about Apple's digital assistant Siri.

Apple's Siri had been touted as the iPhone 4s' main draw. Siri can send e-mails, texts, make phone calls and schedule meetings by voice alone and better yet it talks back to the user. Siri has already become immensely popular with both Apple users and non-users alike, spawning webpages about the funny things Siri says.

Apple's success with Siri hasn't been as well received over at Google and Microsoft. Rubin who is Google's senior vice president of mobile said at AllThingsD's Asia D conference in Hong Kong that people shouldn't be communicating with their phone.

"Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone," he said.

He also downplayed how well users will take to talking to Siri and how pervasive it will get in the market. He pointed out that Google had already built a voice recognition function in Android though it wasn't as advanced as Siri.

Microsoft's Andy Lees also downplayed Siri's influence on the tech industry. At the AllThingsD's Asia D conference, Lees said he didn't think Siri was "super useful." He also said that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 had its own voice recognition feature that will harness the full power of the internet because it uses Bing for its voice search feature.

The two Andy's have good reason to criticize Apple's Siri. For one thing, Siri can cut through search engines Google and Bing and give users data directly from Apple's cloud servers. Google wants to be the top dog in internet searches and having Siri act as a gatekeeper for all the users looking though the internet will mean loss of traffic and ad revenues for the search giant. Microsoft with its own search engine, Bing is also concerned for the same reason.

Another reason why Google and Microsoft are so nervous about Siri is that the virtual assistant is a new way for users to interact with their devices. Although there have been problems with Siri, including poor international support, the feature is still in beta. Apple will still refine Siri and who's to say that voice interface will gradually take over from most software interface? Apple has once again moved ahead of Microsoft and Google.

Make no mistake about it, despite their criticisms both Microsoft and Google are very concerned about Apple's Siri. They will now be working on services that act as Siri does now, at least if they want to keep ahead of Apple and survive in this new voice-activated world.