Alphabet won't talk about the Google-Apple AI deal, even to investors | TechCrunch

"Alphabet declined to answer one of its investors buring questions about Google's AI deal with Apple on Wednesday's fourth-quarter earnings call. Instead of responding to an analyst's question about how the tech giant is thinking about AI partnerships, such as the one with Apple to power AI for Siri, the question was completely ignored. That decision tells us something, though - 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. The two companies' search partnership saw the search giant paying the iPhone maker $20 billion to be the default search engine on Apple devices, filings from the Department of Justice's lawsuit against the search giant had revealed. 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 to give you an idea of scale."

Alphabet ignored an investor question about Google's AI deal with Apple during its fourth-quarter earnings call, leaving the partnership's business impact unaddressed. Alphabet's core business is increasingly focused on AI, and the company appears not ready to explain how the Apple collaboration will affect revenues or strategy. The Google-Apple search partnership previously involved Google paying about $20 billion to be the default search engine, granting access to roughly 2.5 billion active Apple devices. The current Apple AI deal is rumored at about $1 billion per year, while Google experiments with ads and agentic shopping inside AI Mode. Competitors such as Anthropic are challenging ad-supported AI models.

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