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Comment by MountDoom | Hacker News Reader

All of these teens use Google Docs instead of OpenAI Docs, Google Meet instead of OpenAI Meet, Gmail instead of OpenAI Mail, etc.

I'm sure that far fewer people to go gemini.google.com than to chatgpt.com, but Google has LLMs seamlessly integrated in each of these products, and it's a part of people's workflows at school and at work.

For a while, I was convinced that OpenAI had won and that Google won't be able to recover, but this lack of vertical integration is becoming a liability. It's probably why OpenAI is trying to branch into weird stuff, like running a walled-garden TikTok clone.

Also keep in mind that unlike OpenAI, Google isn't under pressure to monetize AI products any time soon. They can keep subsidizing them until OpenAI runs out of other people's money. I'm not saying OpenAI has no path forward, but it's not all that clear-cut.

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>All of these teens use Google Docs instead of OpenAI Docs, Google Meet instead of OpenAI Meet, Gmail instead of OpenAI Mail, etc.

Billions of people use Meta apps and products. Meta AI is all over all those apps. Why is usage minuscule compared to ChatGPT or even Gemini ? Google has billions of users, many using devices operating their own OS, in which Gemini is now the default AI assistant, so why does ChatGPT usage still dwarf Gemini's ?

People need to understand that just because you have users of product x, that doesn't mean you can just swoop in and convert them to product y even if you stuff it in their faces. Yes it's better than starting from scratch but that's about it. In the consumer LLM space, Open AI have by far the biggest brand and these mega conglomerates need to beat that and not the other way around. AI features in Google mail is not going to make people stop using GPT anymore than Edge being bundled in Windows will made people stop using Chrome.

Nah. No one is using Meta AI because it's shoehorned into contexts where you don't actually need it. And that's because these happen to be the only surfaces that Meta controls. They know full well they won't win there, which is probably why they're so desperate for a "hail Mary" in the VR / AR space.

For the average person, what's the most serious / valuable use of ChatGPT right now? It's stuff like writing essays, composing emails, planning tasks. This is precisely the context in which Google has a foothold. You don't need to open ChatGPT and then copy-and-paste if you have an AI button directly in the text editor or in the email app.

>No one is using Meta AI because it's shoehorned into contexts where you don't actually need it.

What's shoehorned about LLMs in a messaging app? This kind of casual conversation is a significant amount of LLM usage? Open AI says non-work queries account for about 70% of ChatGPT usage. They say that '“Practical Guidance,” “Seeking Information,” and “Writing”' are the 3 mot common topics, so really, how is it shoehorned to place this in Facebook ? [0]

>For the average person, what's the most serious / valuable use of ChatGPT right now? It's stuff like writing essays, composing emails, planning tasks. This is precisely the context in which Google has a foothold. You don't need to open ChatGPT and then copy-and-paste if you have an AI button directly in the text editor or in the email app.

Lol I don't know what else to tell you but that really doesn't matter, but it's not like you have to take my word for it. Copilot is baked in the Microsoft Office Suite. The Microsoft Office Suite dwarfs Google Docs, Sheets etc (yes even for students) in terms of usage. What impact has this had on Open AI and chatGPT ? Absolutely nothing.

[0] https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/

I keep hearing that from Meta Propaganda. All those fascinating AI stats.

I've never once seen Meta AI.

Like most people, I once clicked on what looks a chat- or contacts-related search field in Whatsapp when that appeared in the UI.

And Meta is making billions in profits using AI for ad targeting. They have a real business model.

But once people start leaving where they display those ads they are in real trouble.

> All of these teens use Google Docs instead of OpenAI Docs, Google Meet instead of OpenAI Meet, Gmail instead of OpenAI Mail, etc.

Google Docs, Google Meet and Gmail provide a tiny fraction of Google's overall revenue. And they're hardly integrated in with Google's humongous money maker, search, in a way that matters (Gmail has ads but my guess is that its direct revenue is tiny compared to search - the bigger value is the personalization of ads that Google can do by knowing more about you).

> I'm sure that far fewer people to go gemini.google.com than to chatgpt.com, but Google has LLMs seamlessly integrated in each of these products, and it's a part of people's workflows at school and at work.

But the product isn't "LLMs", the product is really "where do people go to find information", because that is where the money to be made in ads is.

I definitely don't think that OpenAI "winning" means Google is going anywhere soon, but I do agree with the comments that OpenAI has a huge amount of advertising potential, and that for a lot of people, especially younger people, "ChatGPT" is how they think of gen AI, and it's there first go-to resource when they want to look something up online.

> Google Docs, Google Meet and Gmail provide a tiny fraction of Google's overall revenue.

I don't understand your argument here. Like Chrome and Android, these products exist to establish foothold, precisely so that Microsoft or OpenAI can't take Google's lunch.

My point is that brand recognition doesn't matter: if you can get equivalent functionality the easy way (a click of a button in Docs), you're not going to open a separate app and copy-and-paste stuff.

All of this will make it harder for OpenAI to maintain moat and stop burning money. Especially when their path to making money is to make LLMs worse (i.e., product placement / ads), while Google has more than enough income to let people enjoy untainted AI products for a very long time.

Even for search, right now, I'm pretty sure there are orders of magnitude more people relying on Google Search AI snippets than on ChatGPT. As these snippets get better and cover more queries, the reasons to talk to a chatbot disappear.

I'm not saying it's a forgone conclusion, but I think that OpenAI is at a pretty significant disadvantage.

> My point is that brand recognition doesn't matter: if you can get equivalent functionality the easy way (a click of a button in Docs), you're not going to open a separate app and copy-and-paste stuff.

I couldn't disagree more with this statement. So far I've seen companies trying to shoehorn AI into all these existing apps and lots of us hate it. I want Docs to be Docs - even if I'm writing some sort of research paper on a topic, I still don't want to do my research in Docs, because they're two completely separate mental tasks for me. There have been legions of failed attempts to make "everything and the kitchen sink" apps, and they usually suck.

> Even for search, right now, I'm pretty sure there are orders of magnitude more people relying on Google Search AI snippets than on ChatGPT. As these snippets get better and cover more queries, the reasons to talk to a chatbot disappear.

I'm sure that's true for older people, where Google is "the default", but just look at all the comments in this thread about where younger people/teenagers go first for information. For a lot of these folks ChatGPT is "the default", as as that is Google's big fear, that they will lose a generation of folks who associate "ChatGPT" with "AI" just like a previous generation associated "Google" with "search".

You're absolutely right about ChatGPT's consumer mindshare, and I think a lot of people undervalue that.

Having Gemini in docs is useful, though. You can ask questions about the document without copying back and forth and context switching. Plus, it has access to the company's entire corpus, and so can understand company-specific concepts and acronyms.

Hell, I had a manager jokingly ask it for a status update meeting for another related project. According to someone actually involved with that project, it actually gave a good answer.

I think the beneficiary is wrong here. Those teens will grow up to work for organizaitons using Azure AD, Windows, Office and OneDrive/SharePoint/Teams.

If any company is going to get the windfall of "AI provider by default" it is going to be Microsoft. Possibly powered by OpenAI models running on Azure.

Google could make a "better" (basically - more sublime) advertising platform but little to attract new users. Perhaps Android usage would rise - Apple _is_ behind on AI after all. On the other hand, users will either use the AI integrated into Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams, Edge and more, or else users' AI of choice (ChatGPT) will learn to as competently drive the Windows and Web UIs as Claude Code drives bash, giving a productive experience with your desktop (and cloud) apps.

Once you use _that_ tool, its now where you start asking questions, not google.com. I am constantly asking ChatGPT and Claude about things I might be purchasing, making comparisons, etc (amongst many other things I might possibly google). Microsoft has an existing interest in advertising, and OpenAI is currently exploring how best go about it. My bet isn't on Google right now.

Possibly, but I don't think that Microsoft apps have the kind of a foothold in the corporate world that they used to have.

Sure, if you join a bank or a government agency, or a big company that's been around for 40+ years, you're probably gonna be using Microsoft products. But the bulk of startups, schools, and small businesses use Google products nowadays.

Judging by their MX record, OpenAI is a Google shop... so is Perplexity... so is Anthropic... so is Mistral.

> I think the beneficiary is wrong here. Those teens will grow up to work for organizaitons (sic) using Azure AD, Windows, Office and OneDrive/SharePoint/Teams.

Idk, younger companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are using google.

If young people are mostly using google docs, sheets etc companies might adapt to use these, actually I already seen it happen

>Google Docs instead of…

All of these teens use Microsoft Word instead of Google Word, Microsoft NetMeeting instead of Google NetMeeting, Microsoft Hotmail instead of Google Mail, etc.

I’m sure far fewer people go to MSN Search than to Google.com, but Microsoft has Windows integrated into all of these products, and it’s part of people’s workflows at school and at work.

When you say ‘Word’, do you mean the app, the web app, or the Teams app? They don’t work well together and leave documents looking truly awful on whichever variant you aren’t currently using.

That this bonfire is an industry standard has to be embarrassing for Microsoft.

Not really. Those teens use Microsoft products, not google ones because that's what schools provide

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