Google Is Siri’s New Brain. But Who Will Control the Travel Booking?
Photo Credit: Gemini PixelDesign / PixelDesign
Skift Take
Embedding Gemini in Siri moves Google closer to the moment of intent — but Apple’s privacy architecture could cap how far that intelligence can act. Travel may be the clearest test of those limits.
Apple’s multi-year deal to embed Google’s Gemini models into Apple Intelligence is an implicit admission that Siri needs a professional-grade brain to remain competitive.
For the travel industry, the partnership marks the next phase of Google’s expansion beyond traditional search. By embedding Gemini into the iPhone’s core, Google positions itself closer to the moment of intent — potentially before a traveler ever opens a browser or an app.
Imagine a casual conversation between friends prompts one of them to look into an island vacation. Instead of bouncing between travel apps or sites to see options or waiting to fire up the home computer, they could just ask Siri.
For Google itself, the scale is huge. Apple has said Siri fields about 1.5 billion requests per day across more than 2 billion active devices. Gemini had roughly 35 million daily active users as of March 2025, according to court filings.
The real questi
