It is. What's impressive about Siri is not the speech recognition (although it's pretty good) but rather two new elements that I haven't seen done as well on another consumer device: 1. Interpreting the meaning of your request 2. Remembering and using context

Siri has been a standout in those areas since before the Apple acquisition. Most people are surprised at just how naturally you can talk to your phone. It's doing more complex work than just passing the request on to Wolfram Alpha.

However, Google has a lot of impressive work in this space, too. I don't think it's long before android phones are this good--they are practically there already.

It's classic Apple: they didn't invent it, but they look like they'll get credit for being the first to popularize it and bring it to the mass market.