Apple Picking Google Gemini to Power Siri Was About Buying Time

Apple’s choice of Google’s Gemini to power the next version of Siri was as anticipated as peanut butter mixing deliciously with chocolate.

Earlier this week, Apple and Google released a joint statement saying the iPhone maker and the online search giant would partner to bring Siri into the age of agentic AI. Exactly what this means is uncertain. What we do know is that Google’s Gemini AI models will power the next generation of Apple’s core models. Knowing Apple, we probably won’t see Google or Gemini branding on iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. Instead, Apple is likely giving Google the opportunity to create a bespoke engine for Apple Intelligence. Apple, however, will drive the car.

“If it’s a romantic comedy, it seems in retrospect that that’s always going to be the outcome — it just makes too much sense,” said Andy Tsay, a professor of information systems and analytics at Santa Clara University’s Leavy School of Business.

Apple’s recent deal with Google follows years of collaboration between the two companies to ensure their dominance in their respective fields. Thanks to the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, 2022 court documents revealed that Google paid Apple $20 billion to remain the default search engine on Apple devices. This dissuaded Apple from creating a competing online search engine and Google was able to glean valuable data from Apple users. The deal also marks the end of Apple’s rocky path to creating its own AI models, at least for now. And Apple’s current partnership with OpenAI for Apple Intelligence hasn’t yielded the results fans were hoping for, although things have improved. As Google and Samsung continue to deeply integrate AI into their devices, Apple’s partnership with Google ensures that they won’t fall behind for another year.

Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Why Google ultimately won

It is likely that OpenAI and Anthropic strongly requested Apple to be the partner to power Apple Intelligence. Past financial partnerships and current technological innovation are why Google likely won, observers say.

“In terms of technology, I think Google’s technology is far superior,” said Humayun Sheikh, an early investor in DeepMind and current CEO and founder of Fetch.ai, a company that creates and/or facilitates connections between AI systems and agents. Google bought DeepMind in 2014 for $650 million. “I would say Google is probably, in my opinion, the one that understands best what’s going on in terms of training these models and putting these guardrails in place,” Sheikh said.

Sheikh acknowledged his bias against Google because he has a long history of working with the company. Fetch is currently working with Google to integrate Gemini models into its Agentverse platform.

“Google also has a lot more experience with mobile devices, so they know how to optimize all of that better than OpenAI, because they have their own phones and their own mobile operating system,” Sheikh said.

Should iPhone users care about privacy?

When it comes to data, no company siphons it off better than Google. It has access to the data of billions of users around the world, through Google, Chrome and Android search. It then allows advertisers to bid to perfectly place targeted ads on this data.

Apple users, however, are very sensitive about privacy. The launch of Apple Intelligence placed privacy as the top concern in a 2024 CNET study. Despite Apple users’ privacy concerns, Google’s long-term role as the default search engine has given it access to a lot of iPhone and iPad user data.

It’s likely that consumers will be concerned about what Apple’s Gemini-based intelligence could mean for their most sensitive information on the device.

“It’s unlikely that the user’s query is going to Google’s server, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Haibing Lu, professor and co-chair of the department of information systems and analytics at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. Lu is also co-founder and CTO of AIConform, a risk automation platform.

What’s more likely, Lu said, is that Google will build the model for Apple and that the AI ​​will live on Apple’s servers and devices.

Essentially, experts say, what matters less is the AI ​​models used and more how they are deployed and the server that hosts them.

Will regulators intervene? What’s the long-term play?

Having the second and third largest global partners in AI could mean further strengthening of big tech, eliminating smaller players like OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral. This could upset regulators around the world, but at least in the United States it is likely that this type of agreement would be allowed.

Tsay said the Trump administration was less willing to challenge big tech than the Biden administration. “I guess they have no problem with it, whereas the previous administration probably would have had a big problem.”

Ultimately, with AI, Apple wants to realize the initial promise of Siri, a digital companion capable of making users’ lives easier. This requires a reorganization of the assistant so that it can integrate with AI to understand what you want it to do and execute it efficiently. To achieve this, however, it will be necessary to leverage technology from other agencies and companies. Apple Intelligence, for now, might be powered by Gemini, but that’s not always the case.

“They may have bought a short- to medium-term solution,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group vice president and general manager of global infrastructure research at IDC, a global market information and data company. “Remember Apple Maps? Google Maps was the default for a long time. Same with the search engine. It’s Google for now. That could change.”

The reinvention of Siri in the AI ​​era will result in a different relationship between users and software. Apps will become less important and take a back seat as Apple Intelligence takes over.

“Apple is seeing that your reliance on multiple apps is going to go down and you’re going to rely on one app where agents can actually do the task,” Sheikh said. “Hence the agentic system, because each agent has to be sort of autonomous and have this cognitive capacity to actually do something, understand something.”