Apple in Talks With Google to Bring Gemini AI Features to iPhone

Apple is in discussions with Google to integrate its Gemini AI engine into the iPhone as part of iOS 18, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Through iOS 5, Maps and YouTube were native apps that Apple built and which were backed by Google services. This was advantageous for both parties at first. Apple wasn't nearly ready to roll out its own mapping service and Google was more focused on growing YouTube's reach than monetizing it. Eventually, it stopped making sense for either party, and they went their separate ways.

The primary media narratives about this focused on Steve Jobs' "thermonuclear" threat over Android's copying of the iOS UI and the degree to which the two companies had begun to compete on services. But one thing that was lost in the discussion—which never really squared with the fact Google has continued to pay Apple tens of billions a year to be Safari's default search engine—was that both companies maintain relatively-tenuous moats to lock in customers.

Right now, Google needs people to reach for its AI and search stack before a generation of users learn to "GPT it", and Apple needs an AI stack for its platform that can compete with the dozens of devices set to launch that are little more than thin candy shells on top of OpenAI's API.

I really hate the idea of this deal, and I bet executives at both companies do, too. Which is why it's so unfortunate that it also makes sense.