Shares in Google’s parent Alphabet tanked by as much as nine per cent on the news, closing 7.5 per cent down. Job’s Mob didn’t escape either, slipping 1.1 per cent after Bloomberg spilled the beans on Cue’s remarks.

Cue told a court hearing on antitrust remedies that Apple was chatting with AI outfits like Perplexity and China’s DeepSeek about becoming Safari search options. That includes letting users ditch Google and pick something else entirely on iPhones and iPads. There’s no deadline yet, but the implications are brutal.

The revelation throws shade on the cosy multibillion dollar arrangement between Apple and Alphabet, where Chipzilla’s search engine is the default on every iOS device. That deal rakes in up to $20 billion annually for Apple and gives Google access to hundreds of millions of eyeballs, prime ad real estate.

Apple could lose a fortune if that arrangement gets the boot due to the Justice Department’s antitrust victory last year, where a judge ruled Google was running an illegal monopoly in search. Cue admitted that AI has finally opened the door to credible competition. 

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said: "The market reaction highlights investor jitters over the impact of conversational AI apps on Google’s traditional search business, which is the company’s financial workhorse. It could be years before competitors match Google’s capabilities in the advertising market."

Job’s Mob has already thrown a few AI powered bones into iOS, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT getting stuffed into Siri. But other promised AI features are still in limbo, which has investors fretting Apple’s falling behind in the AI race, especially against Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Still, the fact that Apple is sniffing around AI upstarts like Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI shows it’s not entirely asleep at the wheel, just late to the starting line again.