Apple has been getting a lot of flak in the press for signing a contract with Google, which will see Google’s Gemini platform serve as the basis for Apple’s Siri assistant. For a company with such deep pockets, the (reported) billion-dollar annual fee (less than 1% of its expected 2025 profit) for this service is a relative pittance, and paying a dependable company like Google to deliver the nascent service avoids the risk of a DIY project failure or a shiny startup going bust. The extent of the announcement is quite literally two paragraphs, buried in a Google blog. “Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based…