Apple Nears $1b Google Deal for Custom Gemini Model to Power Siri
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
9to5mac.comTechstory
heatednegative
Debate
80/100
AppleGoogleArtificial IntelligenceSiriGemini
Key topics
Apple
Google
Artificial Intelligence
Siri
Gemini
Apple is reportedly nearing a $1B deal with Google to integrate Gemini into Siri, sparking concerns about data privacy and Apple's AI capabilities, with commenters debating the implications of this partnership.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Active discussionFirst comment
34m
Peak period
13
0-3h
Avg / period
4.7
Comment distribution47 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 47 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Nov 5, 2025 at 2:43 PM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Nov 5, 2025 at 3:17 PM EST
34m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
13 comments in 0-3h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Nov 7, 2025 at 4:14 PM EST
about 2 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45826975Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 4:38:28 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Next to all the money they poured into Liquid glAss, this will be the worst investment Apple has ever made.
It is cheaper to buy GPUs than to develop the capabilities to develop GPUs.
do businesses really "think" in a personified manner as this? isnt it just what the accounting resolves to as the optimal path?
Maybe paying Google a billion a year is still a lot cheaper?
Apple famously tries to focus on only a few things.
Still, they will continue working on their own LLM and plug it in when ready.
Edit: compare to another comment about Wang-units of currency
Yet at the same time google have the worst offering of all the major players (all starting up out of thin air) in this space.
It doesnt really matter anyway, the LLM is a commodity piece of tech, the interface is what matters and apple should focus on making that rather than worry about scraping the entire internet for training data and spending a trillion on GPUs
Is that so? Gemini Models (including Nano Banana), in my experience, are very good, and are kneecapped only by Google’s patronizing guardrails. (They will regularly refuse all kinds of things that GPT and Claude don’t bat a weight at, and I can often talk them out of the refusal eventually, which makes no sense at all.)
That’s not something Apple necessarily has to replicate in their implementation (although if there’s one company I’d trust to go above and beyond on that, it’s Apple).
That might be true but Siri sucks so bad it doesn't matter. It uses GPT but the quality is OSS models' level.
Or why HomePods don't get answers via iPhone.
The UX and integration with regular phone features is what makes the tool shine and by now there should be plenty of open source models and know how to create their own.
What is Google offering that Apple can't figure out on their own?
Maybe people don't personal assitant AI enough to justify the investment? My phone has probably 6 or 7 AI tools that have talking features that I don't ever explore.
If it gets the answer wrong and I notice it, often just regenerating will get past it rather than having to reformulate my prompt.
So, I'd say yeah...it is consistent in the general direction or understanding, but not so much in the details. Adjusting temp does help with that, but I often just leave it default regardless.
Another, less likely possibility is that Apple may be reluctant to steal enough data to train own LLM to a competitive level and then continue this in perpetuity. They have this notion that they are privacy oriented FAANG company, and may want to keep up this idea.
Maybe it is a sum total of a lot of factors, which in the end tilted the decision to a rental model.
Google closes their trade deficit to half a billion dollars per year.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23933206/google-apple-se...
I'm still using numbers from a post I wrote in 2016
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/24/apple-lays-the-groundwork-...
Am I interpreting that correctly?
I can understand that to a degree but that means the future for Apple is as a technology integrator, not a fundamental technology company.
As I type that out I guess I’m realizing that has always been true.
> "Hey Siri, whens the next Formula 1 race in Montreal"
and she responds with the same infuriating answer I typically get
> "Hmm, I found some interesting results on the web, I can show them to you if you ask again from your iPhone"
I don't care what pride Apple has to swallow, or if they have to layoff 10,000 people.
I just want my device ecosystem to be able to do what its competitors have been able to do for a decade, or what Ive been able to build myself for the last 3 years. A working and useful voice assistant.
At this point Im convinced Tim Cook could sit at a terminal himself and ship a better version of what Apple has in an afternoon.
Apple previously pitched a vision of local-first AI for privacy, but seems to have badly miscalculated the kind of customer experience they could provide. My personal experience is that Siri has suffered greatly.
Case in point, I like to listen to music in the car, and Siri now confidently starts playing artists whose names sound nothing like what I requested. Also maddening "Play [x] on Apple Music" "You'll need to authorize me to use Youtube Music"
Still I live with / pay for so much that is broken based on a kind of Apple privacy vibes inertia. Siri being wired up to more of my personal information plus Apple maybe shipping that data to Google is going to make me reevaluate that.
It means that Apple's huge, expensive AI team has basically failed.
And it presumably means that Apple is willing to accept Google's practices for ML model training and use.
$1B for the software and $1B for the hardware, every few years.