News: 0180726698

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

OpenAI's Lead Is Contracting as AI Competition Intensifies (bigtechnology.com)

(Wednesday February 04, 2026 @03:01AM (msmash) from the not-the-only-game-in-town dept.)


OpenAI's rivals are cutting into ChatGPT's lead. From a report:

> The top chatbot's market share [1]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.



[1] https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/new-data-openais-lead-is-contracting



google has the google.com advantage (Score:3)

by Espectr0 ( 577637 )

especially if they are counting google searches as gemini searches

Re: (Score:2)

by algaeman ( 600564 )

Yeah, but then wtf is using grok?

Re: google has the google.com advantage (Score:2)

by liqu1d ( 4349325 )

Pedos?

Re: (Score:2)

by Morromist ( 1207276 )

pedos.

Re: (Score:2)

by timeOday ( 582209 )

You can tell they aren't counting the "AI Overview" that comes with every google search, because if they were it would outnumber ChatGPT by orders of magnitude.

Re: (Score:3)

by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 )

Give credit where it's due.

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 an

More as the last drops are squeezed from the hype (Score:2)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

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)

by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )

can't short enough, eh? be wary, they play the small shord just as well :)

Re: (Score:1)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

I have zero stock market investments. And you are an idiot.

I have the greatest respect (Score:2)

by MpVpRb ( 1423381 )

...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)

by Hadlock ( 143607 )

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)

by Morromist ( 1207276 )

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

why seek users outside their own organization (Score:2)

by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 )

So you have this apparatus that (you claim) can do all these things at a human level, why make it available instead of using it internally to increase productivity to the point practically no one can compete?

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:2)

by gtall ( 79522 )

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:2)

by high_rolla ( 1068540 )

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:2)

by Laxator2 ( 973549 )

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 th

We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the
machinations of the wicked.