Google Gemini has quietly become the second most-used AI platform for marketers, with usage surging from 33% to 51% in a year. This rapid adoption is heavily influenced by Google's strategic decision to bundle it into its ubiquitous Workspace ecosystem, creating a powerful distribution advantage.

Google's strategy of integrating its AI, Gemini, directly into its widely-used Chrome browser gives it a massive distribution advantage over standalone tools like ChatGPT. By making AI a seamless part of the user's existing workflow, Google can make its tool the default choice, which marketers must optimize for.

Contrary to popular narrative, Google's AI products have likely surpassed OpenAI in monthly users. By bundling AI into its existing ecosystem (2B users for AI Overviews, 650M for the Gemini app), Google leverages its massive distribution to win consumer adoption, even if user intent is less direct than visiting ChatGPT.

Google could surpass ChatGPT in usage overnight by replacing its traditional search interface with Gemini. However, its reluctance to do so stems from a fear of cannibalizing its core, highly profitable search ad business, creating an opening for competitors despite its superior distribution.

While ChatGPT is still the leader with 600-700 million monthly active users, Google's Gemini has quickly scaled to 400 million. This rapid adoption signals that the AI landscape is not a monopoly and that user preference is diversifying quickly between major platforms.

While ChatGPT still dominates (90% usage), Google Gemini has surged from 33% to 51% adoption in just one year. This rapid growth is likely driven by its deep integration into the Google Workspace ecosystem that businesses already use and pay for.

OpenAI is now reacting to Google's advancements with Gemini 3, a complete reversal from three years ago. Google's strengths in infrastructure, proprietary chips, data, and financial stability are giving it a significant competitive edge, forcing OpenAI to delay initiatives and refocus on its core ChatGPT product.

Google is sidestepping a direct confrontation with ChatGPT's text-based dominance. Instead, it's leveraging viral, multimodal models like NanoBanana to drive user acquisition through creative use cases, a domain where OpenAI was previously seen as the leader.

While ChatGPT remains dominant, Google's Gemini has doubled its web traffic share in the last year as ChatGPT's has fallen. This trend mirrors the historical browser wars where an early leader like Netscape was eventually overtaken. Brands must now prioritize their visibility and strategy within the burgeoning Gemini ecosystem.