Apple just paid Google $1 billion to fix Siri — and it actually worked

After a decade of broken promises, the new Siri leans on a licensed slice of Gemini — and the first honest reviews say it's genuinely good. Aliteq Priya Nair · Software & Systems Editor

Apple and Google confirmed a multiyear Gemini licensing deal in January 2026 — Apple reportedly pays roughly $1 billion a year for it.

The rebuilt Siri shipped inside iOS 27 and routes complex requests through a Gemini model, while still processing on Apple's own Private Cloud Compute servers.

Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern tested it for a full week and called it "good-good" — a sharp reversal after years of public criticism.

Apple says raw queries aren't handed straight to Google: requests are anonymized before they leave Apple's infrastructure, and Google isn't allowed to train on them.

The overhaul centers on personal context — Siri now reads Messages, calendar, and email to answer questions a generic assistant simply can't.

For the first time since Apple started promising an AI-powered Siri, the independent hands-on reviews match the marketing. It's not flawless, and the privacy trade-off deserves real scrutiny over…

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