Stanford scientists look for a privacy-minded alternative to Alexa and Siri

The researchers' biggest concern is that virtual assistants, as they are designed today, could have a far greater impact on consumer information than today's websites and apps

It has been almost two decades since Google started to dominate internet search the way Microsoft dominated software for personal computers a generation earlier.

Now computer scientists at Stanford University are warning about the consequences of a race to control what they believe will be the next key consumer technology market — virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.

The group at Stanford, led by Monica Lam, a computer systems designer, last month received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant is for an internet service they hope will serve as a Switzerland of sorts for systems