Apple has finally done what once seemed unthinkable: it has cut a deal with Google to use Gemini as the AI engine behind a revamped Siri. For a company that built its legend on owning its products end-to-end — hardware, software, and services — this is more than a partnership. It’s an admission that after more than a decade of missteps, false starts, and executive reshuffles, Tim Cook has effectively conceded that Apple failed at AI.
Siri should have been Apple’s crown jewel. It arrived before its competitors and was deeply integrated into the operating system. Apple acquired Siri and its engineering team in 2010 from Stanford Research Institute, giving it an early lead and a talented group of AI pioneers. Apple had every advantage.
Instead, that team was gone by 2012. The founders and key engineers didn’t leave quietly. In interviews over the years, they described deep frustration with Apple’s bureaucracy, risk aversion, and lack of a long-term AI vision. What could have become a learning, evolving intelligence was reduced to a tightly controlled feature.
After that, Apple cycled through AI leaders, repeatedly reorganized teams, and continued promising that “next year” would be the breakthrough. Last year Apple announced that the iPhone 16 lineup would include meaningful, built-in AI capabilities. But the AI never arrived, and Apple is being sued for misleading advertising. Now, at last, Apple has turned to its chief rival and licensed Gemini from Google, because Apple has no where else to go but outside the company.
This moment echoes earlier Apple stumbles that should have served as warnings.
Apple Maps launched in 2012 as a replacement for Google Maps and was so deeply flawed it forced a rare public apology from Tim Cook. Apple eventually fixed it, but only after years of embarrassment and enormous investment.
Then there was the Apple Car. After a decade of rumors, leadership churn, and billions of dollars spent, Apple quietly walked away. The electric vehicle project wasn’t delayed — it was abandoned. Once again, Apple’s money couldn’t buy momentum, speed, or organizational clarity.
What makes this latest announcement more troubling is that AI is not just a feature — it’s a foundation. It underpins search, messaging, productivity, creativity, and how people interact with their devices. By outsourcing that foundation, Apple risks turning the iPhone into exquisitely designed hardware powered by someone else’s brain.
Which raises an uncomfortable question: why buy an iPhone at all if Android phones have the original and most advanced version of Gemini? Especially since Apple charges more for iPhones because Apple has convinced us they are more advanced.
Android users will get Gemini first, deeper, and more natively — not as a licensed layer filtered through Apple’s constraints. Google will always prioritize its own platform. Apple customers may get a polished, privacy-scrubbed version of Gemini, but it will inevitably lag. That undermines one of Apple’s core value propositions: paying more to get the best experience. One can only hope Apple continues developing its own AI in parallel rather than surrendering the field entirely.
Looming over all of this is a much larger issue: Google’s monopolistic power. If Gemini becomes the intelligence behind both Android phones and iPhones, a single company effectively controls the most important cognitive layer of the world’s smartphones. Regulators have already scrutinized Google’s dominance in search; AI may prove even more consequential.
Apple, the company that once told the world to “Think Different,” is now thinking the same — using the same models — as its biggest competitor. Siri may finally get smarter. But Apple’s mystique just got a lot dimmer.