Gemini becomes Google's 14th billion-user product

Google's AI chatbot has reached the user scale of WhatsApp and Telegram in under two years. Conversational AI has moved beyond early adopter curiosity into baseline consumer infrastructure—comparable to search or email. The consolidation around a handful of incumbents (Google, OpenAI, Meta) with distribution advantages makes breakout success for pure-play AI startups increasingly unlikely, despite continued funding fervor.