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Gemini becomes Google's fastest-growing product ever as it hits 1B users (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/android@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, I read it. What you are explaining are contexts in which users used to perform a simple query with Google Assistant, or simply Google Search, now replaced with Gemini.

If you want to search for a product to watch on Chromecast, you used to just be able to press a button to look up something by speaking its name, and it would show you wherever you can stream it from. Now it's Gemini, it goes through the Gemini app, and it tries to have a conversation with you. Same for asking anything on Google Home. The Gemini feature of Chrome is also a shortcut for the Gemini web interface, which also downloads a local model to the user's device.

All of that is the "Gemini App". They put the Gemini App on everything to replace things that previously did not have it or need it.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    You are claiming a rollout that begun in September 2025 is the sole or major cause of a MAU count that was announced in August 2026. By your logic, nearly 1 billion people are still being tricked into using Gemini months or, in some cases, close to a year after it became the default option on their device. This obviously makes no sense and I still don't think you read the article, but if you did then must be absolutely delusional.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago*

    Yes. Is it that hard to imagine a forced rollout is still yielding monthly growth as people replace devices or take upgrades they didn't check?

    Obviously the elderly and the dumb will go out of their way to download it directly, hence the decently large volume of users on iOS, but that population only accounts for 10% of use cases. Users of the Android app probably make up a larger chunk of that pie, but that's where we run back into the muddy terrain of whether people went out of their way to download it, or if it was just forced on them by default. My current phone came with it by default, and it took a bit of effort to disable it everywhere.

    Did you read the article, or did you just have Gemini parse it?

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