OpenAI's Lead Is Contracting as AI Competition Intensifies (bigtechnology.com) 28
OpenAI's rivals are cutting into ChatGPT's lead. From a report: The top chatbot's market share fell from 69.1% to 45.3% between January 2025 and January 2026 among daily U.S. users of its mobile app. Gemini, in the same time period, rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2%.
The data, obtained by Big Technology from mobile insights firm Apptopia, indicates the chatbot race has tightened meaningfully over the past year with Google's surge showing up in the numbers. Overall, the chatbot market increased 152% since last January, according to Apptopia, with ChatGPT exhibiting healthy download growth.
On desktop and mobile web, a similar pattern appears, according to analytics firm Similarweb. Visits to ChatGPT went from 3.8 billion to 5.7 billion between January 2025 and January 2026, a 50% increase, while visits to Gemini went from 267.7 million to 2 billion, a 647% increase. ChatGPT is still far and away the leader in visits, but it has company in the race now.
The data, obtained by Big Technology from mobile insights firm Apptopia, indicates the chatbot race has tightened meaningfully over the past year with Google's surge showing up in the numbers. Overall, the chatbot market increased 152% since last January, according to Apptopia, with ChatGPT exhibiting healthy download growth.
On desktop and mobile web, a similar pattern appears, according to analytics firm Similarweb. Visits to ChatGPT went from 3.8 billion to 5.7 billion between January 2025 and January 2026, a 50% increase, while visits to Gemini went from 267.7 million to 2 billion, a 647% increase. ChatGPT is still far and away the leader in visits, but it has company in the race now.
google has the google.com advantage (Score:4, Interesting)
especially if they are counting google searches as gemini searches
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: google has the google.com advantage (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People fact checking Elon's posts.
Re: (Score:1)
everyone on X, duh. lol
Re: (Score:2)
Re:google has the google.com advantage (Score:5, Informative)
I basically stopped using Google most of the time because I could use Copilot for most things. So, I suppose if I were to measure, I google about 70% less than i used to. I mean, most of my googling was figuring out how to do things and these days, I spend my of my time telling copilot to figure out how to do things instead.
That said, I tend to Google when ChatGPT is failing. And well, it fails a lot. It's really just not a very good product.
So, then I use Gemini through Google and more often than not, it gets it right when OpenAI bombs it.
Gemini has become a better set of models than ChatGPT. I probably wouldn't even use ChatGPT if Windows wasn't so utterly intertwined with it.
That said, I pay $10 a month for AI. I have my own LLM server and it's based on a $120 graphic card and it's getting REALLY good now. I don't think I'll be using cloud llms much longer. Thinking models don't need to be big. So, a 10-16GB GPU should be enough. 24 would be nicer for a longer context length though. It's pretty funny that Qwen 2.5 7b actually outperforms the biggest and baddest models if you use it agenticly and tell it to just figure it out. It doesn't need to know absolutely everything. it only needs to know how to research and take notes as it goes along.
More as the last drops are squeezed from the hype (Score:3)
Cannot take that long until it becomes utterly clear that the emperor has no clothes. All that the AI business numbers are doing is getting worse.
Re: More as the last drops are squeezed from the h (Score:2)
can't short enough, eh? be wary, they play the small shord just as well :)
Re: (Score:2)
So you think baseless assumptions are smart? Found the second idiot.
I have the greatest respect (Score:2)
...for DeepMind. They invented much of the tech and are using it to help scientists solve important products
OpenAI is trying to be a consumer products company
Calling it a lead is very generous (Score:2)
I cancelled my chatgpt subscription earlier this month. Their product is frankly quite bad. My work bought me a claude pro max whatever subsription and... I don't need/want OpenAI's products any more? Whatever lead they had, they've completely lost. Coding xyz is pretty important these days, sure, but everyone seems to have proven this is possible.
OpenAI isn't terrible, they're definitely in the top 5.... for now. Whatever breakout advantages they had two years ago, they've squandered, and they have
Re: (Score:2)
They could have built at least a litte moat, I belive, if they'd invested in making good software that works with chatgpt. Integrating chatgpt into your workflow isn't hard if you're a coder but very few people who use it are, and coders are the first to learn about the alternative ai's and start using them - and the mountains of shitty, scammy, insecure, subscription based chatgpt wrappers vibecoded in the last year by random weirdos trying to get rich without doing any work don't help built user's confide
Re: (Score:2)
Out team of ~8 (pentestesting & VA) were unanimous about Copilot being crap and Claude being the top dog. So some higher ups OK'd a Claude Teams package for work. To bypass the CorpSec tards, we use it from our lab environment that has its own unmonitored link and IP range.
Anth
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ouch.
why seek users outside their own organization (Score:2)
In other words, it's not all that, though it can be useful. Basically, their actions just mean: here, see if you can use this to improve your productivity. We don't quite know what it can do for you, and if something breaks, you get to keep both pieces.
A more telling stat (Score:3)
A more telling statistic would be the amount of money the AI companies are getting from selling their tat to other companies. The retail consumers do not seem excited and I do not think the AI companies give a flying rat's ass about retail consumers except as icing on the cake, if it is there. However CEOs seem to be having orgasms over it. Are they putting their money where their mouth has been? Does anyone have anywhere we can go to see these stats?
Is this why Nvidia bialed on their deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if this is why Nvidia has bailed (or looks to be bailling) on their pledge to invest $100 billion in OpenAI?
It probably wouldn't be a good bet pouring all that money into a company whose market share is tending down that fast.
Google is forcing Gemini on Android (Score:4, Interesting)
A few days ago I got a message from Google informing me that they are forcing Gemini on Android devices.
As expected, I was informed that Gemini will slurp up everything I do on the Android tablet to "better something, something".
I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that the value of the AI chatbots is in the information that people reveal about themselves.
When spying on websites, users can only click on what is presented to them. On the other hand, keeping users engaged in a "conversation" will make them reveal information that the designers of the website did not think of.
Google being in the personal data business have the greatest need to slurp up as many conversations with the chatbots as possible, so they will try to grab marketshare from OpenAI.
It was never in the Lead (Score:2)
The business model doesn't work (Score:2)
This shows why the AI spending boom isn't sustainable. One one hand, the only barrier to entry is willingness to spend insane amounts of money. Which certainly is a barrier, but there are enough large companies willing to do it that the market has become very competitive.
And on the other hand, there's no ceiling on how much you have to spend. The only requirement is, "More than your competitors." It's an arms race. Every company has to keep spending more and more to stay competitive. The spending grow
GPT 5 is like C3PO (Score:2)