There is, however, another sort of payoff that comes from this kind of investment, and that’s the accumulation of knowledge and capabilities inherent in building products. In this case, Apple completely forewent any sort of knowledge or capability accumulation in terms of gathering, reasoning across, and serving large amounts of data; when you put it that way, is it any surprise that the company suddenly finds itself on the back foot when it comes to AI? Apple is suddenly trying to flex muscles that were, by-and-large, unimportant for the company’s core iPhone business because Google took care of it; had the company been competing in search for the last decade — even if they weren’t as good as Google — they would likely at a minimum have a functional Siri!