Fans of HBO’s Silicon Valley often cite the three-comma club. The boastful moment – celebrated by the show’s bombastic character Russ Hanneman – when you become a billionaire. Applying that standard to users, not dollars, Google Gemini joined the club by reaching a billion monthly actives.
Notably, this doesn’t even include Google AI infusions such as AI Overviews and AI Mode in core search. The figure only represents Gemini app users. Google says that 63 percent of those 1 billion users talk directly to the app using its voice feature, while it generates more than 150 million images every day.
Stepping back, this 1-billion milestone represents a significant moment for a few reasons. For one, it effectively crowns Gemini as one of Google’s fastest-growing products of all time, which says something about the moment we’re in. It’s also one of 14 Google products over 25 years to hit the 1-billion mark.
This also means Google is catching up to ChatGPT which reached the same milestone in June. It officially puts an end to 2023’s hot take that ChatGPT is a Google killer. As we said then, Google is going to be just fine… it has better AI ingredients than anyone – including underlying tech and distribution.
Gemini’s 3-comma club induction is also a sign of a broader trend that we’re tracking: AI’s transition to the default UX. Initially easing users in with occasional AI Overviews and AI Mode options, these mechanisms are colonizing the SERP. They’re now the primary UX in 43 percent of cases and growing.
Tomorrow’s Race
With all the above, we’re seeing continued evidence that Google is doubling down on cannibalizing itself to win tomorrow’s race. For innovator’s dilemma-inflicted companies – which Google certainly is in this case – the overwhelming majority succumb to the gravitational pull towards yesterday’s race.
In other words, Google is a rare case of such a massive company effectively overcoming the innovator’s dilemma. To be fair to the “overwhelming majority” of companies that haven’t pull it off, it’s is extremely difficult to internalize and execute, especially for a public company of Google’s operational scale.
One reason it’s so difficult is that it requires making active moves to diminish one’s own core revenue stream. It’s essentially the act of trading today’s revenue for tomorrow’s hope of market share. This is a tough sell, given the eternal struggle to appease public market investors on a quarterly basis.
Ironically, the timing may be opportune for Google to get away with this. The rest of the mag 7 (including Google) is embroiled in CapEx spending sprees that impact current financials. So the tolerance levels on Wall Street for big bets that diminish current-period income is somewhat acclimated at the moment.
Back to this week’s 3-comma induction, it’s the latest signal that Google is steadfast in its future-focused trajectory, and it isn’t flinching. As Larry Page said in August 2024 to telegraph everything Google has done in AI since then, “I’m willing to go bankrupt rather than lose this race.”
