France and Pakistan are optimistic that Google (GOOGL.US) will become the “dominant AI platform”: Gemini has narrowed the gap with ChatGPT and has a wider range of AI monetization channels

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the AI model Gemini 3 released by Google (GOOGL.US) in November last year has rekindled the enthusiasm of investors, companies, and the wider tech community for this tech giant. Although OpenAI's ChatGPT is still ahead of Gemini in terms of scale of use, BNP Paribas believes the gap between the two is rapidly narrowing.

Nick Jones, an analyst at BNP Paribas, quoted third-party data as saying, “In December of last year, Gemini's share of website visits and the average number of monthly active users of the app increased from 17.7% and 11.7% in November, and 6.5% and 11.2% in December 2024, respectively, to 22.5% and 13.2%.” He added that Gemini 3's launch in November last year appeared to be a “key catalyst” for user growth, and he was “thrilled” by Google's accelerated growth. He also pointed out that the tech giant is becoming a “dominant AI platform,” which has an important impact on OpenAI and Meta (META.US), especially considering Meta AI's “extremely low level of user adoption.” At the same time, he stressed that Gemini 3 Flash, which was launched globally last month, is now integrated into the AI model for search, which is beneficial to the tech giant and “supports our view that Google has various AI monetization channels.”

OpenAI is facing an increasingly strong trend of catching up with its competitors. Similarweb's data shows that since Gemini 3 Pro was released, its web traffic continued to rise, while ChatGPT's web traffic declined. In December of last year, Gemini's traffic increased 28.4% month-on-month, while ChatGPT's traffic dropped 5.6% month-on-month. However, it should be noted that the chart data only reflects visits to the two websites chatgpt.com and gemini.google.com, and does not include consumer-grade application usage of the two products and other integrated scenarios (such as the artificial intelligence overview function in Google search) in the statistics.

Although it is uncertain whether there is a direct causal link between this declining traffic trend, this data certainly highlights that the competitive landscape of the AI circuit is changing. However, at present, ChatGPT still has significant advantages. According to the data, ChatGPT received 5.5 billion visits in December last year, and Gemini ranked second with 1.7 billion visits.

Although still leading the way in terms of scale of use, OpenAI is aware of the “huge threat” posed by Google. At the beginning of December last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (Sam Altman) asked the company to suspend several sideline projects, including the Sora video generation project, for a period of about eight weeks to fully invest in ChatGPT improvements to cope with the increasingly fierce competition. He believes that in order to ensure the survival of OpenAI, the company must put user satisfaction above its initial goal of pursuing general artificial intelligence (AGI).

Ultraman internally warned employees that Google's strong return to the AI field could bring “short-term economic pressure” to OpenAI. Despite OpenAI's huge investment and first-mover advantage, Ultraman admits that Google still frightens him. He pointed out that although Google experienced its own “red alert” crisis when ChatGPT came out, and did not initially pay enough attention to OpenAI, this did not affect its essence as an “extremely powerful company.” According to Ultraman, Google's deep technical heritage and resource reserves have always made it OpenAI's number one opponent that cannot be ignored.

Ultraman also predicted that in order to ensure its leading position in the industry, OpenAI may issue a “red alert” once or twice a year for a long time to come. For him, this high-intensity crisis response mechanism is not an occasional occurrence; it is part of the company's normalized operation.

Some analysts had predicted that Google and Anthropic would continue to weaken OpenAI's lead. Mike O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said: “Given Google's size, industry position, and first-mover advantage in the search field, Gemini is likely to seize market share, causing OpenAI and other companies to lag behind.” Gary Marcus, a senior scientist in the field of AI, is even more acute. He said, “OpenAI has basically squandered the technological leadership it once had. Google has caught up.”