During Alphabet's fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, despite investors' curiosity about Google's AI collaboration with Apple, Google executives chose to "avoid the topic." When analysts asked about how the two companies would reshape their business models through their AI partnership, such as Gemini-powered Siri, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai did not directly answer the question.
Throughout the one-hour meeting, Pichai briefly mentioned that Google is Apple's "preferred cloud service provider" and said that they are helping develop the next-generation Apple foundation model based on Gemini technology. Google's Chief Commercial Officer Philip Schiller also used almost the same wording, and this highly consistent and restrained expression was interpreted by outsiders as a mutual understanding between the two companies regarding the protection of core commercial secrets.
For a long time, the search cooperation between Google and Apple has been very stable. Regulatory documents show that Google paid Apple up to $2 billion annually to maintain its default search engine status, thus gaining access to a massive traffic of 25 million active devices. However, in the AI era, the monetization logic of this cooperation has become more complex. Although there have been rumors that Apple pays around $1 billion annually for this AI collaboration, its profitability remains unclear. Currently, Google's "AI mode" advertising is still in the experimental phase, and how to seamlessly integrate ads into chat responses without harming user experience remains a challenge for the tech giants.
Additionally, external competitive pressures are approaching rapidly. Competitor Anthropic is preparing to challenge the ad-supported AI model used by Google and OpenAI through Super Bowl advertisements. Google's silence during the earnings call may indicate that the interest-sharing arrangements regarding the future of AI search among the tech giants are still in an extremely delicate period of negotiation.
Key Points:
🤐 Executives Refused to Comment on Details: During the earnings call, Alphabet executives ignored questions about the specific impact of the Apple AI deal, sticking strictly to the official line of "preferred cloud service provider."
💰 Monetization Model Still Uncertain: Compared to the mature $2 billion search transaction, although the new AI collaboration is rumored to be worth $1 billion, the commercial loop of inserting ads into AI search has not yet been fully formed.
⚔️ Intensifying Industry Competition: While Google and Apple remain low-key, competitors like Anthropic are openly questioning the ad-supported AI business model, trying to achieve differentiation in market positioning.