In the area where LLM products are commodifying each other, it’s increasingly difficult for one company to jump ahead of another in this horserace. One day we see OpenAI, for example, release a new model that leapfrogs Anthropic, then DeepSeek does the same thing, then Google the next—and the process continues, but one thing is certain—Google made the most progress in 2025 and continues to build market share this early into 2026.

Apple has chosen Google’s Gemini model to the backend of most of Apple’s “Apple Intelligence” features moving forward, including Siri. Apple has famously lagged behind all competitors when it comes to any sort of innovation in this field. This is much needed to put the mostly hardware firm on level with Android and other platform capabilities.

The new capabilities will include better understanding of a user’s personal context, on-screen awareness, and deeper per-app controls. For example, Apple showed an iPhone user asking Siri about their mother’s flight and lunch reservation plans based on info from the Mail and Messages apps. - Mac Rumors

Google found itself bursting out of a crowded field in 2025 with Gemini 3 improvements. Additionally late last year, Nano Banana; Gemini’s innovative image creator ran circles around OpenAI and Anthropic’s complimentary imagery products. On a personal note, I’m an entirely Gemini house when it comes to using these tools.

Unless another firm leapfrogs with an equally innovative jump, I do not see myself jumping either. Wall Street also had a lot to say last year about Google’s parent company, Alphabet:

Among the eight tech companies valued at over $1 trillion, Alphabet was by far the biggest gainer. The next sharpest rallies came from chipmakers Broadcom and Nvidia, which gained 49% and 39%, respectively. - CNBC

On top of all of this, the catalyst (at least financially) last year was Google’s ‘slap on the wrist’ remedies in this monopolistic court case which allowed them to move forward with additional Gemini integrations into its Chrome browser. Most recently, Google has had success in adding AI integration into its Gmail service, and continued integration into the Workspace suite of products.

Google seems to be firing on all cylinders at the moment, but keep in mind this is the technology sector—any firm can be dethroned at any time, for any reason. Lack of innovation, falling behind competitors, or consumer’s changing behaviors can rear their heads at any time and put another product (or product suite) on top.

Riding into 2026, on top of a successful 2025—this seems to be Google’s momentum to lose. This field is still considered new technology. It’s always best not to rule out new entrance, but until there’s evidence to the contrary—this remains to be true.