[dejawu]

It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves by selecting Google as their provider as opposed to, say, Anthropic or even OpenAI. Doesn't this mean they'll struggle more to differentiate themselves from the assistant on Android phones? Thinking more cynically, couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?

As the consumer, this just sucks because it means no matter which phone platform you choose, you're getting the same thing underneath, and there's no way to avoid it (besides not using an assistant entirely, which I recognize a lot of people do, myself included).

[potatoman22]

I'd wager that for 99.9% of "Apple Intelligence" tasks, Google's models perform just as well as other frontier labs. Google also has done more work on getting LLMs running on edge devices compared to anthropic and openAI.

The source also says > The new architecture centers on Apple Foundation Models co-developed with Google, which Apple says are adapted to run both on-device and on servers through its existing Private Cloud Compute infrastructure

Which could mean Google and Apple have trained some custom models, probably the on-device ones, specifically tailored towards Apple's hardware.

[oulipo2]

That's not the point of OP. The point of OP is that Google is a direct competitor of Apple for phones / OS, so them giving the "key of the house" to Google is risky

[dd8601fn]

What indicates they’ve given google anything other than a truckload of cash? There’s zero data sharing in the arrangement and the stuff is running on apple devices and in Apples Private Compute.

Not even Apple has access to it, by design.

[NorwegianDude]

No reasonable person relies on Apple's statements as facts. That said by Apple's laywers, and is especially true here. Apple can access the data if they want, and so can Google and Nvidia.

[russelldjimmy]

And why would a reasonable person rely on your statement alone as fact?

[Mallory_Ringess]

Because it would be foolish to just trust them on their statements both given their history as well as given the fact that they're in it for the money and tend to follow the path which brings in more of it.

[preg_match]

Yes, but you get less risk in other areas. Google is a long standing publicly traded company. Apple knows that they know their stuff, and that they’re gonna stick around. Anthropic and openAI are new kids on the block when it comes to software as a whole, and that’s a risk.

[justinhj]

They already have a very codependent relationship because of their revenue share over putting Google search up front in iPhones so I doubt either party would put that at risk.

[kergonath]

Apple and Google have been dealing with each other for quite a long time. My guess is that they want to replicate the relationship they have with Safari, where Apple provides the users and Google provides the search engine (and money).

Last year the announced they were working with OpenAI. It looks like this went nowhere, so it's not really surprising to see them try someone else.

[dwaite]

A large portion of Apple's screens come from Samsung. Once a company is large enough, growing your business through supporting a competitor of another group at the company could be seen as a win-win.

[Danox]

The other half comes from LG….

[hgoel]

They're also kind of in the same bucket regarding regulators, which might be something they're keeping an eye on regarding AI integrations.

[bensyverson]

I see it differently… Apple has chosen to treat the model as a commodity. By making Gemini an implementation detail, they leave the door open to swap it out for Anthropic or OpenAI without end-users even knowing or caring. So I think they're creating leverage in any future negotiation.

[t0mas88]

And at the same time they claim it can't be rolled out in Europe because the DMA would force them to allow selection of other AI providers? Which would not even be true if this was an Apple product built on the models of Google, just like the DMA does not force them to pick a different datacenter of office cleaning provider.

[matthewfcarlson]

There's a post here: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...

Take it with a grain of salt but I don't think it's other AI providers that Apple is upset about. The DMA would require users to be able install any openclaw like thing onto their device with access to everything that Siri can access today. There are all sorts of arguments to be made here but I can understand why Apple feels this way and wants to offer a good experience here.

[Gigachad]

Undoubtedly Meta would install themselves as an "AI agent" and then just scrape your whole device for data they can use.

[troupo]

What good experience? Siri has sucked for over 10 years, completely degrading in the last few, with no way to change it to a more capable assistant.

Apple doesn't care about "offering a good experience". Apple cares about vendor lock in. It pisses off even me, a long-time (18 years and counting) Apple user.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

You’re hurling a separate set of UX issues onto the subject of the EU’s deferred inclusion

Also is Siri the only thing you’re using in your Apple products that you’re so clueless as to ask “what good experience”? I mean, what kept you in the ecosystem for 18 years and counting?

[troupo]

> You’re hurling a separate set of UX issues onto the subject of the EU’s deferred inclusion

It wasn't me who said "I can understand why Apple feels this way and wants to offer a good experience here."

> Also is Siri the only thing you’re using in your Apple products that you’re so clueless as to ask “what good experience”? I mean, what kept you in the ecosystem for 18 years and counting?

"How dare you criticize the company whose products you're using"

[Gareth321]

People can already install applications and give those applications access to their files, photos, camera, microphone, etc. I don't see the fundamental difference, provided the user chooses to provide access to this data.

[tansanrao]

Looks like the problem with DMA has more to do with giving full access to other providers outside of the on-device + private cloud compute architecture. The way I interpret the newsroom post [1], Apple doesn't want to give third-party providers full access to user data when the third-party providers cannot run on private cloud compute for privacy reasons, but the EU wants them to offer the choice anyway.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...

[troupo]

> they claim it can't be rolled out in Europe because the DMA would force them to allow selection of other AI providers

They don't claim that. All they said is "later in the EU as we look into privacy and security" after spending two hours saying how private and secure everything is.

DMA would force them to allow usage from other apps than their own and other assitants than Siri, especially for on-device models.

Edit I stand somewhat corrected but it's regular Apple bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451012

[xnx]

> I see it differently… Apple has chosen to treat the model as a commodity

It didn't work out well for Yahoo.com. It turned out that Google Search was the value and yahoo.com just skin around it. It might be the same for Apple. Gemini is the valuable part, what particular device you use it on matters less.

[kennywinker]

Google search was leaps and bounds better than any other search engine when it came along and dominated. Yahoo couldn’t build their own, and nobody else they could buy from compared.

As i understand it, no LLM is miles ahead of the others right now, especially when it comes to simple agentic stuff. Hell, Qwen3.6-35B-A3 quantized to 3bits running on an 8 year old consumer GPU handles most agentic stuff fine, if a bit slow.

Differences in LLMs boil down to mostly the harness and the compute to run the models. Even for high complexity tasks like coding, the differences between openai, anthropic, google, and the bigger qwen models aren’t that dramatic.

[y1n0]

We’re clearly in a different situation at the moment. Google is far from the only useful back end language model provider.

[raincole]

iPhone is a hardware and Apple is a hardware company. So the 'skin' they sell is much more valuable than Yahoo.

[Danox]

In time Apple will swap it out for a in house model like many other things they’re swapped out in the last 25 years, Apple appears to be a company that doesn’t waste money and seem to execute long range projects if necessary I don’t think the Google models will be there for long. I think they will be swapped out when the M series GPUs get to the performance level they want.

[camillomiller]

It’s a bit like when Steve Jobs turned down acquiring Dropbox telling them they’re just a feature, not a product

[kennywinker]

And then they created icloud and now it makes them like $110 billion a year while dropbox makes like $2.5b. I think history has proven them right.

(Ok so $110b is all services revenue not just icloud, but icloud’s a solid chunk of that)

[camillomiller]

I was in the beat at the time. If you had read what pundits were saying at the time you would find countless criticism of Apple's hybris etc... Sounds a LOT like what we read today about LLMs.

[billbrown]

I thought this seemed significant at the time: https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx/pull/1983

[MASNeo]

That’s exactly what a model should be: Implementation detail.

[chinathrow]

Maybe they're looking for stability and trust Google to be around longer than Antrophic or OpenAI when the storm starts.

[deepfriedbits]

Bingo. They see this as the future commodity it will be. Customers will choose AI providers much way they choose a car: taste, price, a few other factors.

And to your point, Google has a massive balance sheet, produces their own AI chips, and is not going anywhere anytime soon.

[kube-system]

People are not even going to choose their AI providers in the future, it's going to be a part of some other product.

[deepfriedbits]

I could totally see that

[Danox]

Google was the right choice stability and it only cost Apple $1 billion per year that’s pretty much of a no-brainer, and with Apple’s history, they probably will use Gemini for as long as they need it and then use their own model in time.

[cpeterso]

And Apple already has a $20B search partnership with Google they can build on.

[create_accounts]

fair and square, indeed

[nalekberov]

I’ll just put this link here: https://killedbygoogle.com/

[chinathrow]

I am familiar what Google has killed before, but a contract with Apple is not something they'll throw out of the window for no reasons.

[rileymat2]

I may be jaded, but I do not trust Google for product offering stability. Obviously, Apple is a way bigger fish.

[vrosas]

It's not a popular opinion on HN but Google is actually super stable from a B2B perspective. Even app engine (2008) is still kicking.

[wnevets]

> It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves by selecting Google as their provider as opposed to, say, Anthropic or even OpenAI. Doesn't this mean they'll struggle more to differentiate themselves from the assistant on Android phones? Thinking more cynically, couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?

Is it really all that difference from Apple defaulting to Google's search engine?

[dwaite]

> Is it really all that difference from Apple defaulting to Google's search engine?

Not really, because the business model isn't there (at least not in this iteration.

1. The models are Apple models, co-developed with Google. They are not white-label Gemini.

2. There's not currently a Google failover or UX

3. Because of that, there's no user monetization to share.

Apple does have a ChatGPT integration, with failover UX, and with a suspected revenue share deal. However, one could see this deal in a precarious situation, since at the time it started it was expected Apple would not focus much at all on a model capable with world knowledge.

[dylan604]

Depends on which way the money is flowing. Google pays Apple for default search engine. Is Google paying Apple for using Gemini? That feels like a much heavier investment if they are

[Danox]

Yes, Google can do that just like Intel, Samsung, Nvidia or Qualcomm yes Google can drag their feet, we know in the end it will all lead to tears and then they will separate.

[changoplatanero]

At the time Apple made this decision there wasn’t as strong of a difference in model quality between Google, anthropic, and OpenAI as there is now. Also Apple definitely burnt some bridges with OpenAI on the agreement they made together a year earlier.

[xnx]

> wasn’t as strong of a difference in model quality between Google, anthropic, and OpenAI as there is now

What's the difference now? I would guess 9/10 people here would have a very hard time telling the models apart in a blind taste test.

[kshacker]

Especially if you are not asking siri to code stuff. If your use case is still "personal context" with "conversation", even if there is a 9/10 difference, the users may see their abilities going from 3/10 presently to 6/10 or 7/10, and still a massive upgrade for most of them. I think therapy and scientific research may remain in the domain of frontier chat interfaces for another year.

[Terretta]

> What's the difference now?

Well, which ones are on my Mac locally?

Which ones are in my iPhone locally?

[mholm]

OpenAI and Anthropic don't make small models. Google happens to already have a billion devices that would benefit from small models, so they made one. Google basically gets 1 billion per year for free*.

[dist-epoch]

Google has very good small models which can run locally on a phone - Gemma4.

OpenAI/Anthropic have nothing in this segment.

[xnx]

Did Apple indicate they are using local models?

[macintux]

That was their original design with Apple Intelligence: do as much locally as possible, only invoke the cloud in a very controlled way when necessary.

[dist-epoch]

> Apple Intelligence is designed to protect your privacy at every step. It’s integrated into the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through on-device processing.

https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Google was likely the only lab grown up enough that could handle Apple's volume and requests.

Apple was not going to hand over the keys to AI to just anyone.

Apple is a Fortune 5 company with a brand value alone worth more than any of these AI labs besides Google.

There's too much at stake for them to not play it safe. There's almost nothing to gain taking a risk

[matwood]

> Apple's volume

Yeah, I think Apple's volume made Google the only choice. And even then, Google was buying more DC capacity last week.

[khalic]

Gemini is better than either at multi modal, google also has their tensor processor stuff with ridiculously high T/s output they need for acceptable UX

[dwaite]

Only Google was willing to do what Apple wanted for a reasonable price.

They licensed Gemini and Google infrastructure not just for use, but to accelerate the creation of the three independent Apple Foundation Models announced today:

- AFM Core

- AFM Core Advanced

- AFM Cloud

Google also worked to be able to host AFM Cloud on their infrastructure per Apple's private cloud compute architecture, including some form of independent third party review/audit.

I suspect the only two organizations with both the model and the infrastructure needed for Apple were Google and xAI - and I'm not sure Apple would touch Grok with a ten foot pole, even if xAI were willing to let it be used for training.

[jayd16]

Google will probably eventually pay Apple to be the assistant, a la search.

[advisedwang]

Google pays to be the default search because they make more from selling ads on those searches than they are paying for the search.

I don't see the same thing here. Google isn't making any money from being the assistant in Apple, so why would they pay to be it?

[erikerikson]

Yet? Maybe they are but embedding adds or paid signal amplification/probability tweaking has already been floated on the market and may already be a product.

[speed_spread]

It doesn't matter if it's classic search or LLM. They can monetize tracking information as easily as they can sell ads. They'll have fast cheap custom-built assistant models that run on device by default, keeping things profitable. In time they'll likely double-dip again by injecting product placement in results.

[jnwatson]

Google can't track information in private inference. That's kinda the point.

[tantalor]

For Google, search quality is a moat. And it's becoming apparent that AI quality is a moat as well.

[silentsea90]

Maybe. Search ads likely make Google more money than they pay apple. For AI, Google currently loses money. If they eventually make money via ads, then sure. Else, apple will have to pay them

[hedora]

Apple has started adding ads to iOS (e.g. maps), just like Microsoft.

I guarantee you Google will start letting people pay to influence the output of the Gemini models once they figure out how to do it.

[wmf]

Search has ads but Siri doesn't. And when Apple puts ads in Siri they won't be Google ads. I don't think Google benefits from this deal enough to be worth paying.

[Schiendelman]

Eventually? I bet they already are.

[hedora]

This is the most likely explanation. Apple manufacturers some of the best inference silicon on earth. Apache licensed models are already 1000x smarter than siri and strongly outperform anthropic, openai and google in the 8-128GiB of RAM range. The article says Apple can run this stuff on customers’ hardware, so that’s the range of model sizes that actually matter.

[free652]

> Apache licensed models are already 1000x smarter than siri and strongly outperform anthropic, openai and google in the 8-128GiB of RAM range

smart is a weird term, gemma4 is an amazing omni model better than qwen3.6 for non coding tasks (as for all Gemini models). For Apple Intelligence gemma4 makes a lot more sense.

[coldtea]

Not if the privacy situation is what Apple says in the Keynote. Only if they can tap that data.

[paride5745]

You think Google cares.

Google doesn't care they do not control iOS. Google cares to have their products everywhere. For many years Google apps were better on iOS than on Android, because on Android they just preinstall them while on iOS they need to be installed explicitly.

Android is not a Google product, it is just a tool for Google to collect data. If they manage to collect data via Apple Intelligence they are going to do it. Regardless of what Apple marketing says.

[benob]

It may be a clever move. By using the same models as android (contractually?), they can compete on the user experience which they typically handle better than android phone providers.

[JumpCrisscross]

> or even OpenAI

Apple originally partnered with OpenAI. We won’t know all the details for some time, but given OpenAI’s penchant for drama (they started leaking that they might sue Apple [1]), it seems fair to sideline them as a long-term partner.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/14/openai-considering-lega...

[vessenes]

It's not clear that there's any sort of durable advantage to the provider here -- in fact, oAI started as the partner with apple a couple of years ago, and is reportedly unhappy with the outcomes.

The hard part is not distilling a frontier model down into a specific use case when you have hundreds of millions of users, the hard part is (apparently) re-architecting your mobile OS to work with such a model rather than fight it. Those architectural benefits accrue to apple, as will future datasets and expertise, and the benefit of having some distillation working 24/7 on prem.

Anyway, where I think you're going to be grumpy in two years is that switching the underlying model is going to require a jailbreak, and that you wish they'd made the os much more deeply open for agentic interaction, not that it's gemini - it's just not the valuable part of the story for Apple or for users.

[slopinthebag]

The differentiation is the integration, not the model itself which is mostly fungible. And afaik Apple is running these models on their own compute, so I don't think google can pull a bait and switch.

[nomel]

> It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves

How exactly are they disadvantaging themselves? Perhaps expand on that opinion a bit, and the data/assumptions you're making in forming it.

My naive assumption is that they're going to do what everyone is doing: make tooling that lets you swap in any model.

I don't think it's fair to assume incompetence, on their part. I think it's much safer to assume they're doing what's best for them, and it's very clear to them what's best (money, support, etc).

[dwaite]

> My naive assumption is that they're going to do what everyone is doing: make tooling that lets you swap in any model.

They are a ways away from that for Siri, as they can't guarantee third party tooling meets their security and privacy requirements. Meeting those security and privacy requirements also makes it harder for a third party to monetize their investment or ongoing use of infrastructure.

But I suspect you will see integration in other areas, such as image generation.

[nomel]

I'm a bit lost, since you didn't answer directly. Are you saying Apples privacy/security requirements are the "disadvantage" you were talking about?

[matwood]

> It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves by selecting Google as their provider as opposed to, say, Anthropic or even OpenAI.

The models are quickly converging to similar capabilities with particular ones being better at a particular task until the next release cycle.

> Thinking more cynically, couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?

Yeah, that's not really how things work at this scale.

[zarzavat]

Differentiating themselves can only be a bad thing for Apple. Google is way ahead of Apple in AI and likely always will be.

Both Apple and Google end up advantaged by this relationship: Apple gets the same technology as Android, meaning there is no competitive front opening up. Google gets eyeballs on almost the entire smartphone market.

Apple can continue to differentiate the iPhone from Android in all the ways that they were doing before.

[chaostheory]

The agent harness matters just as much as the AI model. Using Hermes or OpenClaw feels like night vs day when using OpenAI’s apps even when using the same exact model.

You can even see difference in agent harnesses using the same model in the same company if you compare Gemini CLI with AntiGrav. They are different experiences.

I’m pretty sure Apple’s agent harness will be drastically different from Google’s even with the same model

[piskov]

Maybe openai wasn’t up to the level of customization and privacy they needed

Also openai and Jonny Ive (love from) are cooking some device — may be personal

[elorant]

Anthropic or OpenAI have no foothold into the mobile market. Google has integrated a shitton of AI functionality into their latest Pixel phones. That’s what would scare me if I was Apple and worried that if AI prevails this could steal some market share from me. The other two are irrelevant in this context.

[Centigonal]

I'm speculating, but it's likely that Google is the only provider who is willing to adhere to the inference compute requirements that Apple sets out for their foundation models. They are, after all, the only provider that will let you host their FMs in your data center.

[sofixa]

> Doesn't this mean they'll struggle more to differentiate themselves from the assistant on Android phones

Realistically, does it matter? Most people aren't going to switch phone ecosystems over the assistant available on their phone's OS.

[madrox]

They tried with OpenAI and that deal fell apart. My hunch is that they're considering their own device play given they brought Jony Ive on board.

Anthropic doesn't have the spare compute laying around to do this deal. Even they're buying compute from Google.

[xnx]

What part of using Gemini do you think is a disadvantage?

Also important to remember how immature OpenAI and Anthropic are as companies. It would be a huge technical, legal, and reputational risk to commit to using them.

[twothreeone]

Didn't they famously have a search deal with Google (that they were also ultimately fined for - in the EU at least)? So there's definitely precedent with Google as a "partner".

[mcmcmc]

A functioning FTC would not allow this. Insane that there will be no competition for integrated smartphone AI because the existing duopoly at the OS level has agreed to team up.

[trollbridge]

Or... because the existing duopoly of frontier/SOTA models (Anthropic and OpenAI) agreed to team up and not licence their weights.

[netdur]

Anthropic would never provide weight to anyone for local hosting

[nikcub]

Google are the only one of the big three who can tick the boxes on being multimodal, price / performance and having Apple-level of compute available

[Danox]

Didn’t Apple talked to Anthropic as their first choice, but they couldn’t agree on an amount, almost similar to BeOS and Next remember them?

[dwaite]

We don't really know, we just saw a leak when the deal fell through. I suspect Apple wouldn't reach out to just one AI company at a time.

[elzbardico]

You can be pretty sure that Google will be around us in a two year timeframe. Can't say the same neither about Anthropic or OpenAI.

[Magnets]

They probably started working with gooogle before claude started moving ahead or was on the radar

[J_Shelby_J]

Anthropic and OpenAI are stuck on slower and more expensive nvidia hardware. It doesn’t scale like googles TPUs.

[ok123456]

Google's TPU and Groq's LPU are the only real, commercially viable ways to provide all the compute required for the inference people want.

Just having an ungodly amount of capex by blanketing the Midwest with datacenters full of GPUs is a disaster in slow motion.

[dgellow]

I’m pretty sure both Anthropic and OpenAI don’t have the compute capacity for Apple users

[fennecbutt]

>couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?

Why are Apple people like this lmao. Yeah ofc they could, but they won't because 2 businesses as large as them have a deal it's usually honored.

Couldn't anybody in Apple's supply chain sabotage them? Contrary to popular belief, I don't think Google is in direct competition with Apple at all...Google don't make a mobile operating system. And they certainly don't make much hardware (especially that people should buy).

[thesurlydev]

TPUs