The deal would extend a longstanding Apple-Google relationship: Google already pays Apple $18 billion a year for its search engine to be the default on Apple devices.
The deal would do more than put Gemini into the hands of billions of people across the world, eclipsing Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s user base. It would also help Google make Gemini more powerful very quickly. A genAI tool is only as good as the volume and quality of data on which it’s trained — and training is an ongoing process that constantly improves the tool’s power and effectiveness. With billions of people using Gemini every day, Google would likely be able to improve it more quickly than ChatGPT and Copilot can be improved.
If all this were to happen, it could be déjà vu all over again for Microsoft. Decades ago, Microsoft had a worldwide near-monopoly on operating systems with Windows. It also released a mobile operating system — Pocket PC 2000 — seven years before Apple released the iPhone. It seemed its operating system monopoly would last forever.
But iOS (and the iPhone hardware) was dramatically better than anything mobile Microsoft created, and Android was better as well. Microsoft’s OS dominance vanished as smartphones took the world by storm. The same thing could happen with AI if the Google-Apple deal comes to fruition — Gemini would eclipse ChatGPT and Copilot thanks to mobile.
Why Microsoft may still dominate AI
Even if the deal goes through, Microsoft could still dominate AI. It has a substantial lead in AI, and it’s not taking anything for granted. OpenAI has been quickly releasing new, more powerful versions of GPT — version 4 was released in 2023, and it looks as if a “materially better” version 5 will be available this summer. So ChatGPT and Copilot are constantly becoming more powerful.
In addition, Microsoft just hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, which was bought by Google in 2014 and which ultimately became Gemini. After Suleyman sold DeepMind, he founded another AI startup, Inflection AI, and Microsoft has hired not just Suleyman, but nearly the entire AI staff of Inflection, including its chief scientist Karén Simonyan. Microsoft now has the best AI talent in the world either on staff or working for OpenAI.
