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Despite strong updates from Google, OpenAI’s AI continues to attract a wider audience.
OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, continues to dominate its competitors, surpassing Google Gemini in terms of audience size. Despite Gemini’s technological advantages in benchmark tests, OpenAI’s service is growing its user base at a significantly faster pace. Bloomberg experts attribute this to stronger network effects and ChatGPT’s aggressive scaling strategy.
ChatGPT now has over 800 million active users weekly, and by the end of the year, this number could exceed 1 billion. This makes the service one of the fastest-growing online products in history. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman consistently boosts engagement by adding personalized settings and more freedom in interactions while trying to cover the company’s high operational costs. Meanwhile, Google’s chatbot Gemini demonstrated superior results in several industry tests in November. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stated on X that after using ChatGPT for three years, he will not return to it, adding: “The leap is incredible — reasoning, speed, images, videos… everything has become clearer and faster.” However, Gemini significantly lags behind ChatGPT in market share. According to Similarweb, Gemini’s web version had about 153 million monthly visits in October, compared to over 1.1 billion for ChatGPT. Moreover, ChatGPT’s growth rate has remained higher over recent months.
Analysts point to several factors slowing Gemini’s growth. Google has traditionally been stronger in utility services — search, maps, email — but has less experience in creating products with strong network effects that make people return regularly.
Additionally, Google’s approach to AI development focuses more on scientific achievements. AI division head Demis Hassabis prioritizes research, while OpenAI focuses on user engagement and monetization, which significantly affects product growth dynamics. OpenAI actively updates ChatGPT, adding “persistent memory,” personalized interactions, adult content features (after full age restrictions), and group chat functions. These tools aim to retain users and encourage transitions to paid subscriptions.
Google is also rolling out new capabilities for Gemini, positioning it as a smart assistant with deeper integration into Google’s ecosystem, including Docs, Chat, Gmail, and Calendar. However, these features are currently less effective at driving mass user engagement.
Analysts emphasize that the slower pace of Google’s development is not critical. The company maintains leadership in search, cloud services, and AI chip production, allowing Gemini to grow gradually. First-mover advantage has been key for ChatGPT, and Altman has no plans to slow down. About 20% of OpenAI employees have experience at Meta, a company historically focused on maximizing user engagement. This influences OpenAI’s strategy: it bets on making ChatGPT indispensable, while Google focuses on making its model smarter.
