Totally agree with you about both of these companies - it seems like Apple hasn't had a big new idea in quite a long time. It's baffling to me that when I'm listening to a song on the radio, I can't say "Hey Siri, add this song to X playlist on Spotify." It's such a simple thing! But Siri sucks and doesn't seemed to have advanced at all in the past couple of years. Meanwhile, Gemini is WAY better than ChatGPT, and I've permanently switched and stopped paying for GPT entirely. How could Apple have missed the mark this badly?
Apple has plenty of cash on the balance sheet. While I don’t understand their AI strategy either, it is within their gift to acquire Anthropic (for example).
However, OpenAI cannot acquire an OS. Microsoft might have as much “business surfaces” as Google (email, office suite, calendar) and an OS but is lacking the the consumer stuff (YouTube, Photos, and Search with any real market impact). Hard to see an outcome where Google is not at the top of the race, and because of all that base “lifestyle tech stack” (your phraseology), they can be late or even wrong a few times and still end up on top in the end. But Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic are full of incredibly smart people and advised by many, many more (including some of those pesky bankers) — so if there is room in the “intelligence” market for 2 or 3 players, there is plenty developments that will take place in the next 3 years at a large enough scale to impact most of the media world (and the ‘real world’ too). And as ad-powered search erodes, Google must replace that revenue stream in real-time with the next generation of the intelligence services — and that is not straight forward.
The media industry’s challenges will play out inside this sea change of intelligence stacks. The advertising industry’s fortunes are also widely tied to this epic clash of market forces (does AI replace influencers, how do you monetize AI summaries in search, etc) — and Google will be directly impacted by how that change occurs. We are certainly all cursed to “live in interesting times”.
Nice article! The looming question for Alphabet is: How can they loose any “war”? They never loose. It’s almost impossible for them to loose, even if they tried. That’s MONOPOLY. I’m smelling big legal action against them on the horizon for 2026. If not, their “competition” has given up.
Totally agree with you about both of these companies - it seems like Apple hasn't had a big new idea in quite a long time. It's baffling to me that when I'm listening to a song on the radio, I can't say "Hey Siri, add this song to X playlist on Spotify." It's such a simple thing! But Siri sucks and doesn't seemed to have advanced at all in the past couple of years. Meanwhile, Gemini is WAY better than ChatGPT, and I've permanently switched and stopped paying for GPT entirely. How could Apple have missed the mark this badly?
Brilliant analysis - very insightful, thanks for sharing! I wonder though, where is Amazon playing in the bigger picture?
Apple has plenty of cash on the balance sheet. While I don’t understand their AI strategy either, it is within their gift to acquire Anthropic (for example).
However, OpenAI cannot acquire an OS. Microsoft might have as much “business surfaces” as Google (email, office suite, calendar) and an OS but is lacking the the consumer stuff (YouTube, Photos, and Search with any real market impact). Hard to see an outcome where Google is not at the top of the race, and because of all that base “lifestyle tech stack” (your phraseology), they can be late or even wrong a few times and still end up on top in the end. But Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic are full of incredibly smart people and advised by many, many more (including some of those pesky bankers) — so if there is room in the “intelligence” market for 2 or 3 players, there is plenty developments that will take place in the next 3 years at a large enough scale to impact most of the media world (and the ‘real world’ too). And as ad-powered search erodes, Google must replace that revenue stream in real-time with the next generation of the intelligence services — and that is not straight forward.
The media industry’s challenges will play out inside this sea change of intelligence stacks. The advertising industry’s fortunes are also widely tied to this epic clash of market forces (does AI replace influencers, how do you monetize AI summaries in search, etc) — and Google will be directly impacted by how that change occurs. We are certainly all cursed to “live in interesting times”.
Great write up. Thank you.
Nice article! The looming question for Alphabet is: How can they loose any “war”? They never loose. It’s almost impossible for them to loose, even if they tried. That’s MONOPOLY. I’m smelling big legal action against them on the horizon for 2026. If not, their “competition” has given up.