Google Versus OpenAI: Whose Fish Is Bigger?

May 6, 2025

No AI, just a dinobaby watching the world respond to the tech bros.

Bing Crosby quipped on one of his long-ago radio shows, “We are talking about fish here” when asked about being pulled to shore by a salmon he caught. I think about the Bingster when I come across “user” numbers for different smart software systems. “Google Reveals Sky High Gemini Usage Numbers in Antitrust Case” provides some perjury proof data that it is definitely number two in smart software.

According to the write up:

The [Google] slide listed Gemini’s 350 million monthly users, along with daily traffic of 35 million users.

Okay, we have some numbers.

The write up provides a comparative set of data; to wit:

OpenAI has also seen traffic increase, putting ChatGPT around 600 million monthly active users, according to Google’s analysis. Early this year, reports pegged ChatGPT usage at around 400 million users per month.

Where’s Microsoft in this count? Yeah, who knows? MSFT just pounds home that it is winning in the enterprise. Okay, I understand.

What’s interesting about these data or lack of it has several facets:

For Google, the “we’re number two” angle makes clear that its monopoly in online advertising has not transferred to becoming automatically number one in AI
The data from Google are difficult to verify, but everyone trusts the Google
The data from OpenAI are difficult to verify, but everyone trusts Sam AI-Man.

Where are we in the AI game?

At the mercy of unverifiable numbers and marketing type assertions.

What about Deepseek which may be banned by some of the folks in Washington, DC? What about everyone’s favorite litigant Meta / Facebook?

Net net: AI is everywhere so what’s the big deal? Let’s get used to marketing because those wonderful large language models still have a bit of problem with hallucinations, not to mention security issues and copyright hassles. I won’t mention cost because the data make clear that the billions pumped into smart software have not generated a return yet. Someday perhaps?

Stephen E Arnold, May 6, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Google, Legal matters, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.