I respect Google's engineering, and I'm aware that fundamental technologies such as Protocol Buffers and FlatBuffers are unavoidably integrated into the software fabric, but this is is avoidable.
I'm surprised Google aren't paying Apple for this.
Unfortunately, it probably actually is a small number comparatively. Or at least I would need to see some sort of real data to say anything different.
I feel like people who distrust Google probably wouldn't trust Apple enough to give them their data either? Why would you distrust one but not the other?
Second I'm developing privacy focused apps that were going to use foundation models. Now I need to seriously reconsider this.
It ISN'T in this day and age. People don't switch back and forth between iOS and Android like it's still 2010. They use whatever they got locken in initially since their first smartphone or where Apple's green/blue-bubble issue pushed them to or what their family handed them down or what their close friend groups used to have.
People who've been using iOS for 6+ years will 98% stick to iOS for their next purchase and won't even bother look at Android no matter what features Android were to add.
The Android vs iOS war is as dead as the console war. There's no competition anymore, it's just picking one from a duopoly of vendor lock-ins.
Even if EU were to break some of the lockins, people have familiarity bias and will stick with inertia of what they're used to, so it will not move the market share needle one bit.
Performance? We are many years past the point somebody cared about performance. I am writing this on iphone 11 pro and the experience is almost exactly the same as current iOS.
You know what's not the same? Android became pretty great OS. I recently got older Pixel to see how GrapheneOS works and was surprised about Android (which i havent seen for a decade). iOS on the other hand has recently gone trough with very bad ui redesign for no reason.
Imho the main thing Apple has going for it is that Google is spyware company and Apple is still mainly hardware company. But if Apple decides to pull their users data to gemini… well good luck.