OpenAI declares code red as Google gains ground
Brian opened with news from the Wall Street Journal: OpenAI has declared a code red as Google threatens its lead in generative AI. According to figures cited in the episode, Gemini’s monthly active user base reportedly grew from 450 million to 650 million following the release of an image generator and Gemini 3.0, while OpenAI still leads with roughly 800 million active users. Andy’s read was that the trajectory looks challenging for OpenAI even if it remains the largest player.
He drew a parallel to Netscape, which had first-mover advantage in browsers but was eventually overtaken by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. OpenAI raised roughly $58 billion but is reportedly spending around $50 billion a year, and the market for AI services is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars rather than the trillions being invested in infrastructure. The math, as Andy put it, requires either a dramatic reduction in spending or a dramatic expansion of the market.
Google’s stock tells a different story than the headlines
While headlines have focused on OpenAI’s dominance, Google’s stock has moved in the opposite direction of what skeptics expected. According to figures cited by the hosts, Alphabet’s market capitalization roughly doubled from $1.9 trillion to $3.8 trillion in six months. Over the same period, Microsoft’s stock rose only about 1% to 2%.
Google’s price has doubled in just the last six months, which is hard for a company to do when it’s worth $1.9 trillion.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
The inflection point appears to have come with the release of Gemini 3.0, which practitioners in the hosts’ community described as a significant leap forward in reasoning, speed, and image and video capabilities. One member of the community wrote that after using ChatGPT daily for three years, he spent two hours on Gemini 3.0 and said he was not going back.
Gemini users are spending more time per session
The hosts shared data suggesting that Gemini users spend more time chatting per visit than users of ChatGPT or Claude, around seven minutes compared to roughly six minutes. Brian raised the devil’s advocate question: does that mean Gemini is more engaging, or does it simply take longer to get a useful answer? Andy acknowledged both possibilities but noted that the usage trend favors Google.
Another point in Gemini’s favor, according to comments cited during the episode, is that its context window is roughly five times the size of ChatGPT’s or Claude’s. A larger context window allows users to include more background material in a prompt, which can be valuable for complex research or analysis tasks.
The zero-click problem: Google’s advertising model at stake
The challenge for Google is that its success in AI may undermine the business model that generates the vast majority of its revenue. Roughly 95% of Google’s revenue, according to figures cited by the hosts, comes from search advertising. Traditional search presents organic and sponsored results that users click, and a small fraction of those clicks generate revenue. Zero-click search, where the AI delivers the answer directly, removes that step.
I don’t remember the last time I looked at a sponsored result. I just go there and it gives me the answer. That’s called a zero-click search.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
Andy compared the situation to Netflix’s transition from DVDs by mail to streaming. Netflix had to cannibalize its existing business to capture the new one. Google faces a similar choice, but as a publicly traded company with search as its core, the transition carries significant risk. The hosts noted that OpenAI also faces an advertising question eventually, since subscription revenue may not be enough to cover costs at scale.
Google may have had this technology years ago
Andy described a 2018 incident in which a Google engineer publicly claimed that the company’s language model had achieved sentience. Google denied the claim, and the engineer was let go. Andy’s interpretation was that Google had early versions of this technology but buried it because it threatened the search advertising model. When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, Google released its own model within months, which Andy attributed to the company pulling a product out of the back room rather than building from scratch.
The implication for practitioners is that Google’s resources and prior work may give it an advantage in iterating quickly. The company can afford to invest in the technology while it works out the business model, an option not available to every competitor.
What the AI bots say about themselves
The hosts asked both Gemini and ChatGPT who would win the AI race. Gemini’s response was diplomatic but positioned itself as the choice for research and data analysis, while describing ChatGPT as better suited to creative projects and nuanced conversations. ChatGPT’s response acknowledged that there was no clear winner and offered to explain where Gemini might have an edge.
Andy noted the irony of quoting an AI as if it were a human source, a sign of how quickly norms around these tools are evolving.
Community view: Google is being supercharged, not killed
The hosts polled their community of B2B practitioners and asked whether AI was killing or supercharging Google’s search business. The result was decisive: 86% said supercharging. The sentiment suggests that practitioners expect Google to adapt its model successfully rather than be displaced by pure-play AI competitors.
B2B is going to be forever changed by AI. The question is how exactly.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
The takeaway for B2B ecommerce teams is that the AI landscape remains fluid. Google, OpenAI, and others are all contenders, and the eventual winners will be determined not only by technology but also by business model and distribution. For practitioners, the priority is to ensure their content is structured and authoritative enough to appear in AI-generated answers, regardless of which platform ends up dominant.