Alphabet just did something unusual on its fourth-quarter earnings call - it completely ignored an investor's question about its AI partnership with Apple. When an analyst pressed CEO Sundar Pichai about how the company views AI partnerships, particularly the deal to power Siri with Gemini, the question went unanswered. The silence speaks volumes about how sensitive this billion-dollar arrangement has become as both tech giants navigate the shift from search to AI.
Alphabet declined to answer one of its investors' burning questions about Google's AI deal with Apple during Wednesday's fourth-quarter earnings call. Instead of responding to an analyst's question about how the tech giant thinks about AI partnerships - specifically the one with Apple to power AI for Siri - the question was completely ignored. That decision tells us something important. Alphabet isn't ready to talk about how this partnership will impact its core business, which is increasingly focused on AI.
Over the years, the Google-Apple relationship has been mutually beneficial, but the economics are shifting. The two companies' search partnership saw the search giant paying the iPhone maker $20 billion to be the default search engine on Apple devices, according to filings from the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against the search giant. In turn, Google gained access to Apple's massive customer base - the iPhone maker last quarter announced it has 2.5 billion active devices worldwide.
The latest Apple AI deal flips the script. Bloomberg , but the payoff for Google isn't as immediately obvious as it was with search. In Google Search, consumers see links to advertisers' websites at the top of their search results. Ads in AI Mode, which could one day represent the future of Google's search business, are still an "experiment" for now.
