Apple, Google, and the Siri I Know

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My aunt Carol, who still refers to the internet as “the information superhighway,” asked me the other day if Siri was getting smarter. It was during Thanksgiving, and I was attempting to explain compound interest to her while simultaneously preventing her from adding marshmallows to the gravy. It felt…complicated. I mumbled something about “machine learning” and escaped to refill my wine. The truth is, Siri hasn’t exactly been a revelation. She mostly misunderstands me, or worse, pretends to understand and then delivers a search result for something entirely unrelated. Like the time I asked her to call my mother and she started reading me the Wikipedia entry for garden gnomes.

So, when I read that Apple is essentially outsourcing its artificial intelligence ambitions to Google – to Alphabet, if we’re being precise – I felt a strange sense of…relief. Not for myself, necessarily, but for the poor engineers at Apple who’ve been tasked with making Siri less embarrassing. It’s a humbling admission, isn’t it? The company that brought us the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch – a company that once seemed capable of anything – is now relying on Google to power its voice assistant. It’s like watching a master carpenter ask a teenager to hold the nail.

Leaning on a Familiar Enemy

Apparently, Apple is going to be using Google’s Gemini to make Siri and other “Intelligence features” less…obtuse. It’s a multiyear deal, which means a lot of money is changing hands. Billions, probably. My aunt Carol would be horrified. She still thinks everything should be free. And frankly, so do I, most of the time. But someone has to pay for the algorithms, I suppose. It’s a bit like a protection racket, really. Except instead of broken kneecaps, we get slightly more functional voice assistants.

The interesting thing is that both Apple and Google are part of this so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of tech stocks. It’s a rather grandiose title, isn’t it? Like a superhero team assembled to save us from…what, exactly? Bad user interfaces? Anyway, the fact that Apple is willing to partner with a competitor suggests that Google’s AI models are genuinely impressive. Apparently, Gemini 3 is ranking highly on some crowdsourced review platform called LMArena. I haven’t looked at LMArena, to be honest. I’m more of a Reddit guy, myself. But I trust the wisdom of the crowds, to a point.

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The Stamp of Approval (and My Mild Optimism)

Apple has this incredible ability to distribute hardware. There are over 2.4 billion active Apple devices in the world. It’s a staggering number. And their brand is…well, it’s Apple. People will queue for days to buy a slightly updated version of the same phone they already have. It’s baffling. But it works. And now, they’re leveraging that distribution network to deliver a better AI experience, powered by Google.

So, am I suddenly bullish on Alphabet? Not exactly. I still suspect that most of this AI hype is overblown. But I do think that Alphabet is positioned to benefit from this trend. And the fact that Apple, with its discerning taste and obsessive attention to detail, has chosen to partner with them…that’s something. It’s a quiet endorsement, a subtle signal. Maybe, just maybe, Siri won’t be so embarrassing anymore. And maybe, just maybe, I can explain compound interest to my aunt Carol without wanting to hide in the pantry.

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2026-01-26 13:32