Google’s Gemini app now has more than 750 million MAUs (monthly active users), up from 650 million before the Gemini 3 launch in mid-November. CEO Sundar Pichai said Gemini 3 Pro “has seen the fastest adoption of any model in our history.”
A 100 million user increase in three months is impressive, but the comparison to ChatGPT requires a footnote. OpenAI reports weekly active users (nearing 900 million, per The Information in December), while Google reports MAUs. These are not the same metric. MAUs include people who opened the app once. Weekly active users suggest habitual use. Google is catching up, but the gap may be wider than the headlines suggest.
As fun as this press release is, it misses the point. Gemini lives inside Chrome, Android, Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Docs. Apple announced that Google will be its “preferred Cloud provider” to develop the next generation of Apple Foundation Models, based on Gemini technology, to power a revamped Siri later this year. Samsung is doubling its Gemini-powered devices to 800 million units in 2026.
OpenAI has ChatGPT powering itself and some of the Copilot-branded Microsoft products. Putting a fine point on it, Gemini now reaches billions of users and devices across Google’s ecosystem and its partners. This is no longer a race. Google is the winner.
Google is projecting capital expenditures of $175 to $185 billion in 2026 (essentially double what it spent last year) with the majority going to AI infrastructure. The AI assistant market is consolidating around two serious players: Google and OpenAI. One has a path to profitability, the other… not so much. As for Anthropic? Claude serves a different market and has a different business model.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.