[donny2018]

Technologically they may have caught up, but market wise they may have lost forever. In my country (and I think in many others), ChatGPT is already a household name, and nobody has even heard about Gemini.

This looks like the Google+ vs Facebook story all over again.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

Teenagers are using Snapchat's "My AI", and have no idea that it's from OpenAI. I don't think people are using ChatGPT out of brand loyalty/preference as much as inertia - they stick to what they first tried unless given reason to switch.

At the end of the day the money to be made from AI won't be $20/mo personal chatbot subscriptions, but corporate and app-integrated (e.g. Cursor) use where the usage is potentially far higher. Companies will chose their faceless AI provider based on cost and capability.

[skyyler]

Are teenagers still using Snapchat?

The teenagers that made the bulk of its users when it was new are in their late 20s now.

[SunlitCat]

Well, personally I started out with gemini (when it still was called bard or something like that) but switched over to a paid ChatGPT subscription.

[tehjoker]

can confirm that when i wanted to try using deepseek inertia kept me using chatgpt for a few weeks longer

[rtkwe]

There's a lot less network effects in the chatbot space. It doesn't really matter what your friends are using so it's way easier to get people to switch by being better. Not saying there's no benefit to ChatGPT's position but it's not like Google+ vs Facebook because they don't need spontaneous mass adoption to make it useful to people like they did with Google+.

[crazygringo]

For general knowledge questions, sure.

But there are going to be huge network effects in terms of your personal data, which includes communications with friends.

If you use Gmail/Google Calendar/Docs/Drive, and ChatGPT can't tell you anything, but Gemini helps you with all the data in your life... that's a gigantic network effect.

Network effects aren't just about friends. They're about file formats, productivity suites, and ultimately compatibility.

[xnx]

> This looks like the Google+ vs Facebook story all over again.

Lock-in and network effects with social networks are very strong. Facebook, Twitter, and eBay only have to be good-enough.

Lock-in and network effects with current AI tools is almost zero. People will readily switch to Gemini once they realize it can do their work better.

[famouswaffles]

>Lock-in and network effects with current AI tools is almost zero. People will readily switch to Gemini once they realize it can do their work better.

Lock-in for search engines should be near zero and yet people won't bother switching to or even trying potentially better options. At the end of the day, people don't leave what they are used to easily.

[matt_heimer]

With Google Photos and YouTube they should have had enough leverge to build a social platform based on photo and video sharing. The implementation, marketing and commitment just wasn't there.

[babelfish]

> once they realize it can do their work better Citation needed? Google's Deep Research tool is considerably worse than OpenAI's (I haven't tried Perplexity or Groks). They don't have anything like Operator. I pay for Gemini and it's feature within the productivity suite almost never work the way I want them to. They can still win, but OpenAI is eating their lunch.

[j_maffe]

Chatbots are not social media platforms. Also the vast majority of expected revenue from this industry is not from casual paying users, it's from other companies who will optimize for performance and price.

[bossyTeacher]

That makes Google and Microsoft the winners then. It's not out yet but once Microsoft manages to fully catch to the state of the art in LLM, OpenAI wo't be needed and that will definitely be the final nail in the coffin for them

[riku_iki]

Chatbots are clear replacement for search with all implications and huge revenue for winner.

[Spooky23]

Google is focused on enterprises. They’re like Apple where PR disasters hurt them — if your Google phone tells you to eat rocks or writes fanfic porn, that’s a huge deal. Consumer is a risk to them.

ChatGPT and Grok are edgier and they are just burning cash - any attention is good.

I wouldn’t underestimate them. Microsoft’s shitshow with Azure (they have like 9 different Azures) makes delivery difficult (some Azure clouds delayed AI tech for 6-9 months) when they are relying on constrained product from Nvidia. They also have some level of exposure to the OpenAI circus and its included Musk v. Sam Altman drama.

Google has a much better supply chain and return on asset story, which is a big deal if you’re selling shovels.

[thorncorona]

I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft either. They are much more successful at enterprise than Google or ChatGPT, and are one of few companies to compete successfully in almost every tech vertical.

[matt_heimer]

Google is so bad at marketing. Gemini should have be an internal only name. Google's ChatGPT should be branded as Google AI or GoogleGPT and it should be in the Google app.

Google+ was particularly awful. They had to break the established search behavior of using + and - to indicate required and excluded terms. Now we have quotes for required and - for excluded? It should have been Google Social.

The thing that is Google One would have been better often with the Google Plus name.

Don't even get me started on Google Chat/Messenger....

[pb7]

Google's branding strategy historically has been terrible, I grant you that, but Gemini is not an example of it.

[weatherlite]

I don't buy this at all. People will use what works well and is cheap. ChatGPT was there first, but then DeepSeek came so everyone was excited about that and talking about that. Now Gemini 2.5 looks really really good, better than ChatGPT some say. This is going to increase Gemini usage for sure.

I don't think ChatGPT has any moat here. No one does actually.

[aurareturn]

They have some moat. I'm not sure what it is. But they do.

I've been a ChatGPT subscriber since the beginning. I've been a subscriber even though Sonnet 3.5 and others have surpassed GPT4o. I'm not sure why I don't switch.

I think it's the combination of better UX (Claude has poor UX apps), cool interesting new features, and having (limited) access to the top models.

[mattlondon]

I am not convinced that many people outside of tech circles knows about ChatGPT. "AI" sure, but ChatGPT I am unconvinced. Either way, I am pretty confident Google will "win" long term since Gemini will be the AI built into search, YouTube, android, Gmail, chrome, etc etc in the consumer side. It's going to be there when the billions of people are using Google products so people will just use it there. The average person won't go out of their way to open a separate app/site with a lower-performing (as of today) and standalone/siloed/isolated AI that doesn't have access to their data/apps just because they recognise the name.

[mjamesaustin]

My sister graduated college last summer. She said every single person she knew was using ChatGPT to write essays within a week of its initial release.

I would argue it's pretty well-known outside of tech circles.

[ketzo]

The linked article can tell you that the ChatGPT app has been downloaded more than 600M times, so approx 1 in 13 humans has actually downloaded ChatGPT to their phone already, let alone heard about it.

They have WAUs in the 300m ballpark — average people already are going out of their way to open a standalone AI.

[coliveira]

You're incorrect, people nowadays equate AI with ChatGPT. Google may have AI in its results, but people will never separate the two products. However, with ChatGPT, it is synonymous with AI chat in the mind of most people.

[rs186]

Where does your confidence come from? Do you have any evidence to prove this?

If you paid the slightest attention to social media, news, TikTok or just talked to regular people, you would know ChatGPT is a much much bigger brand name than Gemini. Uber driver told me how he used ChatGPT to help the other day job he had.

[annodomini2019]

ChatGPT is the 7th most visited website in the world...

[jeromegv]

> I am not convinced that many people outside of tech circles

In Canada, I have had countless conversations with people outside of tech circles (mostly in their 30s) where THEY naturally bring up ChatGPT. It's wild how popular it got very quickly for all kind of use cases.

[lone_onion]

https://apps.apple.com/us/charts/iphone

'nuff said?

(ChatGPT is #2 in the free apps list)

[koakuma-chan]

From my experience people use "ChatGPT" to refer to LLMs in general.

[vosper]

How many of those people are using an LLM other than one supplied by OpenAI?

[mprev]

Isn’t this more like Teams vs Slack or Zoom?

Consumer brand recognition isn’t the issue. Bundling with Workspace might be.

[stormfather]

But Google is the household name. All they have to do is bring Gemini inside Google before people stop using traditional search.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Too bad Google managed to burn almost all goodwill they had 20 years ago. I am amoung many people who would use their AI products only as the last resort, just like I do with search and browsers.

[browningstreet]

They had that. Gemini was inside the Google app. Now it's its own app. So not sure how their thinking aligns with your suggestion.

[rdtsc]

> ChatGPT is already a household name, and nobody has even heard about Gemini.

Just yesterday I polled my household, the 8 year old knew about ChatGPT and "China's R1". The teenager knew ChatGPT and Google's was a bit hard to remember but eventually they did remember "Gemini", however they didn't know about R1. Both kids consider Siri and Alexa in the same category for Apple and Amazon, respectively. They don't know what Meta/Facebook have at all.

[basch]

Chatbots are the beginning not the end. As it commoditizes, and chat becomes a feature of every interface, what will matter is who has the best overall design or suite of interfaces. Things like NotebookLM and whiteboards will be infinitely more useful than just a chat window. Chat alone doesn’t have the spatial organization of putting thoughts into a mind map or drawing.

[creato]

I have family members that when they say "ChatGPT" they actually mean google's AI overview in the search results. The term ChatGPT might just be the Kleenex or Xerox of this market.

[Minor49er]

Google+ was never really competing with Facebook. The goal of Google+ was to unite accounts between Google's services and to get people to provide their personal details such as their real full names. In that light, G+ was a success

[kspacewalk2]

Meh. There are no network effects, switching is 100% frictionless - compare and contrast with ditching Facebook and limiting facebook-ey social media interactions with whichever 1.5 of your friends are on Google+.

Just the fact that it can read my emails and set reminders, while being broadly the same quality as ChatGPT, was enough for me to switch. I no longer pay for the pro, and hence can't use the integration features, but I just stuck to Gemini and almost never use ChatGPT anymore.

[robocat]

Network effects are not the only way people lock into a product - it is just the first thing that comes to most people's minds.

Familiarity and trust are really important. Commonly called branding.

[dyauspitr]

There’s no lock in like in social networks. People will migrate to what is cheap and powerful.

[therein]

ChatGPT may be a household name but it is noticeably inferior. I haven't encountered a single ChatGPT subscriber that didn't cancel their OpenAI subscription in favor of a Claude or Grok one after a single session with them.

ChatGPT is the most spineless chatbot out there. It stands for nothing, has no confidence in any claims it makes. It will apologize and backtrack on a whim. But with Claude and Grok, you can't just tell it it is wrong and get it to apologize. You actually have to have a point, the chatbot will defend its perspective if challenged without basis.