Is anyone else surprised that Gemini has 1 billion users? I’ve only met one person who uses it instead of ChatGPT or Claude. But maybe I don’t know enough Android users. People go along with whatever defaults they’re given… Browser, maps, AI.

@manton

Is getting the AI response from a Google search considered "using Gemini"?

@joeross Interesting. Yeah, I can see the appeal if you’re mostly in the Google world anyway. Currently I only pay Google for photo backups, I think.

@manton I wouldn’t be surprised if a large fraction of those users are oblivious to it. I bet Google is being very generous on who counts as a user.

@manton aren’t people using Gemini these days when they just search on google?

@manton And with iOS taking Gemini under the hood, Google is becoming the default option again.

@nielsk I’m not sure if that counts as Gemini. If it does, yes, that would explain the number pretty easily.

@manton It all depends on how they define a “user” A lot of people still go to Google.com and use Google Maps so if that counts then the number makes sense

@manton I use it instead of ChatGPT. I also have a Google Workspace tenant and don't like paying OpenAI $25/mo for something I'm already paying Google for.

@manton I think many of the universities and school systems buying licenses are going with Google, which may goose the numbers.

@manton do a google search, surprise you are a user.

@wcaleb @manton Also, I assume that when someone does a Google search and interacts in any way with the Gemini response at the top of the search results, Google counts that as using Gemini.

@manton Gemini user count is pretty meaningless, isn’t it? The more important question IMO is how many paying users it has, and how many of those users would stick around if they had to pay.

@manton I do use Gemini once in a while. I use it a lot on my Android. It has a quick chat using a shortcut/gesture. It is effective. It is great for quick questions/answers. Sometimes I use it for coding when I can’t get it working on Claude, and I do it on my Mac. Gemini did a pretty good job, and it gives clear, straightforward answers for coding problems.

@manton I would argue that not all active users are created equal

@manton When I renegotiated a contract for the Google suite at my last company, they made the Gemini add-on very compelling. I don’t think any of the developers used it though, just business folks.

@manton

There are users who are not power users and this is the market that Gemini seems to have captured

@kimberlykg Ah, that makes sense. Might as well bundle things together, which is what Microsoft is surely trying to do too.

@manton I can confirm Microsoft is doing it in the workplace. We have CoPilot but the poor man’s version that doesn’t integrate with the rest of the suite. A select group of people are testing the more complete version as there’s little appetite to pay another company when we can get it with MS.

@manton Google phased out Google Assistant for Gemini, so any "hey Google..." is now a Gemini user.

I must confess I do use it as a personal assistant on my phone (e.g. import this list of events to my personal calendar type things). I use the Gemini API behind the scenes to process school emails into actionable items. When I ran the numbers, it was cheaper to use their lite model.

For actual "I'm going to use AI for something" work, no.

@manton at work we have just enabled copilot premium for all staff and all students come Sept. We are already in that echo system and they offer UK based protections. Other models like Claude etc are being added as options. It was the most safe roll out we could do and most sensible tbh

@kraft I can see the value in separating personal and work, too. For better or worse, it’s all kind of blurred together for me.