Apple

[Grieve]

The more I think about it, the more I suspect there is zero threat to Google.

Google doesn't make money by getting you to go to their website and do a search (they might get SOME money that way, if you click on any of the ads). I think they mostly make money by selling their search engine to people who need to do searches, which likely includes Siri. Google sells API keys and those keys cost money based on usage. A worldwide product like Siri that employed Google searches would be paying Google a pretty penny.

So if you need to book a flight and use Siri rather than Google, I'm not sure this is costing Google anything. Google isn't exactly losing money just because I type "expedia.com" in my browser, either. And unless Siri has an API that competes directly with Google APIs, I doubt Google even looks at them as a competitor.

You have it backwards. Google makes almost every penny of revenue they get (like 98%) from advertising. When you get a list of Google results, they make money from the ads that appear next to the results. When you click one, the companies pay google money. They can also pay a premium so their ads are targeted - i.e. if you search for "halloween", you'll get ads from companies selling halloween costumes. I researched it back when I was setting up a website. And you don't need to go through the Google homepage - most searches are done from a toolbar.

As for Apple paying Google, you also have that back to front. Google pays Apple (in the hundreds of millions range) so that Apple makes Google the default search engine on Safari (and probably Siri too). That's the way all the search engines work - they pay web browsers and other apps to make them the default or bundle them as a toolbar - how many times have you seen that checkbox to install a Google or Ask.com toolbar with a freeware app?

Mobile search is the holy grail of search advertising, and Google (ironically) makes a fortune from iPhone users, because iOS has by far the most web traffic (and the users tend to be more wealthy). Every time Apple does a new iOS release there is always buzz that Microsoft will have paid them millions to switch to Bing as the default, but it hasn't happened yet. Kind of surprising, really, considering how relations are between the two companies. The Maps app uses Google as well, but the Stocks and Weather apps uses Yahoo.

Anyway, Siri is in fact a huge threat to Google, and there have been a lot of financial articles saying so. Anything that bypasses search to get you the info you want is going to cost Google money.