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Google has been beefing up the skills and scope of its Gemini AI, though it's still playing second, third, and even fourth fiddle to other AI bots. On Thursday, a Wall Street Journal story shared details on the popularity of Gemini AI and Google's struggle to extend its reach.
Though it's long been the king of search and had been working on its own AI bots, Google was caught off guard by the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. "The company has been scrambling to catch up ever since," said the Journal.
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With its search engine, advertising income, Android market, and other areas, Google hardly depends on the revenue generated by Gemini. However, the AI arena is shaping up to be a lucrative and exciting new source of money and market share. That's why it's important to Google that it continue trying to better compete with other generative AI providers.
But there's one major obstacle standing in Google's way. OpenAI continues to dominate the AI landscape with ChatGPT. Looking at one revealing stat about subscriptions, OpenAI is currently the leader at capturing retail AI customers. ChatGPT Plus and Pro users accounted for 62.5% of all paid AI B2C sales in the US at the end of 2024, according to a January 2025 Earnest Analytics report cited by the WSJ.
Other players also have made a dent. Midjourney at 6%, Claude maker Anthropic at 4.5%, and AI photo and video service Topaz Labs at 3.7% round out the list of the top four paid AI tools based on market share. Gemini was stuck in fifth place with a 3.1% slice of all that revenue.
About 56% of Gemini subscribers kept their subscriptions alive six months after initially signing up, according to the same report. In that respect, Google outshined such rivals as Character.AI and Perplexity but was below OpenAI at 70% and Anthropic at 75%.
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Google itself hasn't revealed how many people currently use Gemini, the WSJ said. A December 2024 report said that Gemini averaged almost 275 million monthly visits by the end of the year. Though that was up from 270 million monthly visits in August 2024 and 271 million in July 2024, it was down from 292 million in October. In contrast, ChatGPT has around 300 million weekly users, according to OpenAI.
Based on the latest stats from Apple, the Gemini mobile app was the 55th most downloaded free app for iPhones, while ChatGPT was No. 4. The ChatGPT app has been available for iOS since May 2023, whereas Google launched the Gemini iPhone app just last November. Still, that's a wide gap.
Though Gemini may be less popular than ChatGPT, the technology itself has been advancing. Last year, Google introduced Gemini Live, a way to carry on real-time conversations with the AI bot. In December, the company unveiled Deep Research, an agentic feature for Gemini Advanced designed to conduct research on your behalf.
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On Wednesday, Google inked a deal with the Associated Press to incorporate real-time news feeds into Gemini. And now in experimental mode is Gemini 2.0, an upgrade to the AI that promises to be faster, smarter, and more capable than the current 1.5 flavor.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently told employees that he feels Gemini's capabilities have surpassed those of competitors. In return, Pichai wants Gemini to be used by 500 million people by the end of 2025, sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ.
For now, all Google can do is continue to advance the service, maybe throw in more of its marketing savvy, and hope that more people will turn to Gemini and not ChatGPT when they need a dose of AI.
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