ChatGPT vs Gemini - The Empire Strikes Back

So I want to talk about ChatGPT versus Gemini. The Empire Strikes Back. So do you want to know how the Empire strikes back here?

No, because I have no idea what this is other than a Star Wars reference.

Yes. Okay, so check this out. When you look at this graph over here— oh my God, I got a time limit over here. Okay, so ChatGPT versus Gemini, The Empire Strikes Back. So ChatGPT, you could look at as the young upstart, right? And then Gemini is the Empire, right? Like Darth Vader and all that. So you look at a Google trend graph over here, it shows that ChatGPT has been very popular for a very long time. They're the young upstart. And then when you look at Gemini, which is the empire owned by Google, when Nano Banana launched, Gemini's users shot up like crazy, right? And so I thought this would be a great way to start. When you look at it, when Nano Banana launched, it is the best image model by far.

Yes.

And when you launch— Google has so many amazing products within it, and sometimes when they just launch something and they launch it relatively well, They launched it within Gemini app and you can see a little banana in there. That's why Gemini's users shot up. I think it was over 13 million or so, and it was already a highly ranked app. So it's really hard to get a highly ranked app even higher.

Yeah, when I look at Google and Gemini, I think there's a good chance they may win the AI race. The reason being is they have access to a lot of data, and if you look at their products, at least their recent releases, they've been amazing. I do think Google has one problem though, and it goes, it comes down to marketing. You can release a good product, you're gaining traction with your existing user base, but we were at the HubSpot Inbound event, most people had no clue about the product and never heard about it.

Mm-hmm.

And most of the people in the room should be using it. I look at Google as releasing great products is going to help you gain more traction, But it doesn't mean you're going to win. They actually need to start doing marketing and explain things in layman terms and really work on adoption for non-hardcore users, I would say.

Google is actually a really good example of having all the distribution, or literally all the distribution, Android, Chrome, all these things, right?

Gmail.

Search, yeah, everything. YouTube, right?

YouTube.

Yeah, but they do such a poor job of marketing their own stuff. So it just goes, this is actually a case in point where it's like, oh, All the distribution doesn't matter in the world if you don't know how to bring awareness. And the other thing is, do you remember back in the day, Steve Jobs tried, he wanted in one of his ads to promote a bunch of different features, right? His ad leader was like, I'm not going to do that. So what he did with Steve Jobs in the room, he crumpled up a piece of paper and he threw it at Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs caught it, right? And then he crumpled up 5 pieces of paper, he threw it all at Steve Jobs and Steve caught none of them. He's like, that's an example of multiple different messages and you only want one message with your ads. And when I think the problem is Google has so many different things, I think maybe every month or so there's a massive launch, right? And maybe you have 12 big marketable moments a year. You can't have too many because it starts to get too crazy and people start to forget.

Yeah. Did you, on a side note, did you watch the Apple launch video a few days ago?

I didn't, but I got the new iPhone. I just ordered a new iPhone today.

Which one did you pick?

I got the silver iPhone 17 Pro. What'd you get?

I got the, uh, black iPhone 17 Air. I think it's—

You got the Air?

Yeah.

The reason I didn't get the Air is because I'm like, it, it seems like, uh, what you want to go for, like, it's the second generation of the Air because the first one's not going to be that good because I think the battery life's a lot less and then camera—

Battery life's the same as the Pro.

Why don't you try it first? Hey, hey, why don't we try it? No, no, the website has the reviews and they always say it's like that, but it always ends up being like half the battery life.

Apple's been pretty decent at predicting their battery lives.

It looks— I will say the Air looks beautiful, and I don't like how the 17 Pro looks, but I was like weighing the two, and then I was looking at what are all these other tech people picking, right? So I'm sure when I see your Air, I'll be like, damn, I really want that. There's a black one?

There's a black one for the Air. And Apple has done a good job, even going back to features, what you talked about in their launch video, they do talk about, hey, What is it called? In their launch video, they do talk about how specific features— like, they're not— when Apple talks about their iPhone Air or their Pro, they're not highlighting 50 things, but at the very end slide, they'll show like an overview and they list a lot of the features or some of the new cool stuff that makes it amazing. But generally in their videos, they do focus on one feature. Um, at a time, and they try to make it simple so that way people are more likely to buy. But with the Pro, the new one, did you see the viral Instagram video on the new Pro?

No.

Dude, someone just took an iPhone 15, not a 16. They just took the camera, expanded it to here, and moved these 2 dots, and they're like, you now got an iPhone.

Do you have a 15? This is a 15.

This is a 16.

Oh wow.

But they should— they just expanded end of this part and be like, now you got an iPhone 17 Pro.

We'll see. I mean, I like the longer battery life and it's like faster charging and all that. I know the Air is slower charging, so I think it's more beautiful. I think I'll buy it for the next round, so we'll see how it goes. And I don't want the orange one because I don't want to draw attention either.

Do you use your battery life right now?

Yeah, it actually drains it pretty quickly. And this is a 15 Pro.

But it's 2 years old now.

This is 2 years old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I get a new one every single year Not because of the features for one reason.

No, you didn't get a long— you didn't get a new one for a long time. You had a piece of crap for a very long time.

But recently for the last like 3, 4 years, I've been getting a new one every year.

Why? Well, I get a new one because I get it for free. Why do you get a new one?

I buy a new one because I want the battery life.

Oh, okay. Well, there you go.

Yeah, because even if it says 27 hours, after you use it for a year, it starts degrading.

Yeah, you know what? And you know what? I don't know if you do this because you're OCD, right? I wash my phone every day. Do you wash your phone?

Not every day, maybe every like 3, 4 days.

You know what's dirtier than your toilet?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's right. I wash it every day.

Every 3, 4 days. Yeah.

And then what happens is this charger starts to mess up. And so I have to use the side charger.

I use the MagSafe. I have a little case that you put it in and it just kills all the germs. Oh, okay.

Oh, you do that every day? Do you scan it with the purple light after?

No, I have never tried scanning with purple light. I clean the phone a few times a week, right? Hence I said like 3, 4 days. But the case thing, I probably use it maybe 2, 3 times a week. I should be putting it in every day. I just don't. It could be because the one I have, it doesn't charge the phone. But if it charged the phone, I would use it at nighttime.

So, okay, I just asked ChatGPT. I said, is it better to wash my phone or UV light it? And so this is kind of going on a tangent. We can come back to this. And I want to come back to Apple story real quick with Steve Wozniak. But Um, basically best practice is combination is ideal. Use a microfiber cloth or alcohol wipe to clean dirt, oils, then UV light for added germ kill. If you only choose one for appearance and hygiene, wipe with alcohol solution. For convenience and reducing wear, UV sanitizer. Yeah. So it's basically what you do actually.

Yeah. And the reason I ended up doing that is it just helps keep my phone clean and I don't clean it because of the toilet thing. I clean it because I want my screen to be, not have tons of prints. It just bothers me. Yeah, 'cause you're OCD, dude.

Speaking of which, so the Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, so he actually responded on Reddit. I don't know if you saw this one, but he basically sold all of his wealth. So he gave all of his Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. He says, I have no idea how much I have, but after speaking for 20 years, it might be like $10 million plus a couple homes. So that is his entire net worth right now. It's not like he's, filthy rich and worth like, he could be worth $3 trillion if he just held onto his shares. But yeah, he earns money from his labor and pays something like 55% combined tax on it. He says he's the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness, which is smiles minus frowns. I like that. Smile minus frowns is happiness. I developed these philosophies when I was 18 to 20 years old and I never sold out. So even though he's the co-founder of Apple, he just did things on his own terms and everyone has their own definition of happiness. But I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, whatever works for each individual. I don't think there is a right or wrong way. I have a friend, you know him, and he once told me, I think like, to be happy, all you need to make is like $80-something thousand a year. I forgot what the exact amount is.

$70,000.

And it probably changes over time with inflation. So I don't know what it is in today's world.

You're right. You're right. 10 years ago, no, no. When I first started in the workforce, it was $70,000. It was a Lifehacker blog post. So now it's probably $80,000, $85,000, $90,000.

Yeah, something like that, right? Let's call it, you can even round up to $100,000. And this person still believes that, and they'd rather take pictures and travel the world and experience what they want. You know who it is at this point, versus going and make more money. And do I think that's a right or wrong approach? I think for them, that is the right approach because they're genuinely happy. They don't have kids, they're not married, they don't care for any of that. They just want to travel to new nature-related places. and take beautiful pictures and that's like their, you know, zen moment. And it's like, keep doing what you love to do. I want to ask you something.

So personally, would you rather have relational wealth or financial wealth at the end of your life? What's more important?

I think you know the answer to that. Financial wealth is useless at the end of your life.

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It's a little bit different because I'm 40 and I have kids and I'm married. So I would pick relational wealth.

Yeah. But how about 10 years ago?

It would just be pure financial.

Yeah. So the reason I bring this up is 'cause I've been filling out this 5-minute journal probably for over 10, 12 years or so. So every day I write what I'm grateful for. I've noticed probably over the last 5, 10 years or so, it used to be things that I'd be grateful for every morning that I write this in. But then now it's always people. I'm always listing people every single day. I actually list you guys sometimes too. So yeah, I'm just constantly listing people. And then as we get older, you realize in your 20s maybe, It's all about go, go, go, money, money, money, money, money. But then you realize all the money in the world's not going to help you if you don't have anybody to share it with.

I don't know if it's about the 20s or 30s or 40s. I think it's different for every person. And here's why. You could be right on the stat or the number or the age range, but I think you and I are bad examples to ask because we have enough money to genuinely live a very comfortable life. We have money. You agree with that statement? If another COVID happens and everything gets shut down, we have enough savings to ride it out. Yeah. So when I pick relational wealth, that is, it's a skewed answer because I already have enough to be comfortable. And I believe you already have enough to be comfortable as well. So I think that changes our opinions compared to other people.

You're right. We're biased because we live the lives that we live, right? But I would also say that I remember reading, you know, Morgan Housel, he wrote a book called the psychology of money basically. And one time there was someone who wasn't wealthy or anything, but he pointed at a billionaire and said, I have something that they don't. I have enough. Right? And so there's a lot of people we know that do modestly well. They do pretty well. Right? But let's just say they make, you know, $80,000, $100,000 a year, which is like, it's decent. Right? But they're not driven by money or anything. They just said they're really happy with their relationship with their family and their friends. Right? And I see a lot of people, especially with my family like that. And I'm sure you see the same thing too. So even though you and I might be biased, I think once you can get to the point where you're a little, I think they're a little bit older, all these people, it's like—

But also comfortable. If you look at most of the people in your family, they all do decently well. They're comfortable.

They do decent, but I wouldn't say they're like, I think a lot of them are, I would say they're middle class, right? Which is okay. And some of them are actually struggling a little bit too, but they're still happy with hanging out with their family and seeing their nieces and nephews all the time.

Yes. But if they were not able to afford groceries and put enough food on the table, I think—

Oh yeah. Well, at a certain point, yes. You have to focus on providing. For yourself and for your family. But once you get the baseline, to your point, at $75K, $80K, $100K or whatever, I think chasing relational wealth is the thing. And I think we've been taught— I think I've been taught wrongly because Chinese culture is focused so much on money growing up. I don't know how you were taught, but like, at least I used to hear my parents talking about money all the time. You get a little older and you get a baseline level of success. You're like, yeah, it's not about the money.

So my parents are really interesting. They'll ask me typically when they come over, I see them at least a few times a month. You know, we were sick recently, but— Once a week? Yeah. If I'm not sick or anything, the kids aren't sick, once a week, try to be respectful because they're older. So, we don't want to get them sick. When we see them, my parents will usually ask, how's business? Right? If I say business is good, their usual response, not always, but Their typical response is something like, you should spend more time with your family. You work too much. You need to see your sister more, see us more, better relationships with family. You know, work isn't everything.

They're not wrong.

But if I say business is bad—

Yeah, work on the business.

Their typical response is, you need to work more, you know, but don't stress out too much. We want you to be happy. All will be okay. You know, you can always come move back with us if you lose everything. So it goes into like really doom and gloom and it's like—

So you've optimized it more to say, oh, business is not that good. So they tell you to work more.

No, I just tell them the truth. Like if they say what's happening, I tell them, I'm like, business is— this has been a terrible year for business. We're okay, but it's been a terrible year. And they're like, don't stress. They're like, just keep in mind that you're okay. And my parents try to look at the light of things and they'll tell me, yes, they say, work hard, but I've been telling them business is bad for over a year at this point. So they don't push too much more on working hard. They try to push more on don't stress out, everything's okay. You have enough money. If you don't, you can come live with us for free and you can have our house. Like they're really chill about it and they're just like, Ruining your health isn't worth making more money.

That's interesting. Yeah, I think my parents probably more edged towards the, uh, relational side. Even my dad yesterday was like, you know, you haven't been to China for a very long time. Maybe you should go to China and find a wife. I'm like, anyway, we can continue on here. You can pick the next one.

Uh, let's see. Let's talk about, uh, there was an interesting, uh, article on ChatGPT. Chatopatic? What's Chatopatic? Chatopatic.com? I'm messing up the name.

ChatOptic.

ChatOptic. Thank you, Eric. I so butchered that one. I'm like, ChatOptic.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh dude, I just butchered that one. Sorry, ChatOptic. Okay, so they had an interesting article and a study. It was SEO does not equal GEO. Only 62% overlap between Google rankings and ChatGPT visibility. So they're saying if you rank on Google 62% of the time, you're going to see that visibility on ChatGPT, and the other 38% of the time you will not. I still look at SEO and GEO very similar, but I agree. But it's the same goes that like saying if you rank on Google, you're going to rank on Bing. We all know that's not necessarily true because they have different algorithms. Sure, there's a lot of similar results on the first page for the same keywords, but but not always. And I genuinely believe that no platform is going to show identical results because if they do, there was no point in using them. Like if you use Bing and it's identical to Google, then why would you? You have to differentiate somehow. You're going to have a little bit of different algorithms. But even then, going back to your study, when it comes to Gemini, I have another one here. Did you know, and Search Engine Land published this, 95% of all ChatGPT users visit Google? 14% of Google users visit ChatGPT.

That's the one I wanted to call out. Yeah, that's been shared quite a bit. So it does basically reinforce that right now, at least, Google is still very much king. It is the empire.

It is, but no one wants to talk about it. And yet you look at their revenue and their profitability, they're doing phenomenal. And here's the thing, and this is just my opinion, if I look at the recent AI releases that Google has done versus ChatGPT, I would say in the last 3, 4 months, Google has done a better job.

Yeah, V03, Google Nano Banana, like those are things I can speak to. I will say ChatGPT, to their credit, to OpenAI, they've done a better— at least they have more of like a launch figured out with their new products. Like ChatGPT-5, they had all these things pushed out and that was cool marketing. It's just the products didn't deliver. So if they combined the way they did marketing with Gemini's features or Google's features, that would be the best mix.

And I would rephrase it, and I know you mean the same thing here when I say rephrase it. I would say Google releasing the features they are, but launch like Apple.

Yes, launch like Apple. Yeah, because OpenAI copies Apple.

Yeah, and I say Apple does a better job than OpenAI of creating hype and awareness and how they record the videos and stuff like that.

And to be fair though, like Google does their I/O event every year and that kind of is Apple-esque. They probably just need to do more of it.

Yeah, but they should do specific videos just for the launch. Like you go to Apple's website and I'll go to the homepage of Google or type in any search for like, watch our in real time, the new launch of, you know, Google's XYZ.

You know what they need? They probably, and they probably have this already, but they need product marketers because the problem with these things is like Google Nano Banana, like you didn't know where to find it and how to access it in the beginning, right? VO3, it's like, where do I go to search for this stuff? And if it gets too confusing, people are just going to drop out. Like it's, if you think of it as like a funnel, there's too much drop-off.

Would you agree with the statement that you and I know more about most Google news because we keep up with the industry sites?

Yeah.

Did you know I learned about Nano Banana first from, uh, what is it called?

Twitter? X.

X, yeah. And I saw all the examples on X and I clicked, I'm like, what the heck is this?

Yeah, X did the marketing for them.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And the reason it went viral is because people were showcasing what they did with it. I'm like, this is cool. Who created this? How much did they raise? And then I'm like, oh, Google. This is Google.

Yeah.

I'm like, no wonder it's so good.

Yeah, it's insane. And like, you know, what I constantly struggle with It's like, man, should you and I be spending the time to learn this? So where I've landed on this, I'm curious to know where you've landed, is I'll play around with it a little bit just to understand how it works, but I'm not going to go too deep. I need to know enough to be dangerous. But the thing is, as much as I want to obsess and dive into everything, it's not the best use of my time. How do you look at it?

Very similar. I probably play around with it a little bit or quite a bit less than you. So with their new features, VO3, I've probably played around with it max 2, 3 hours. Over all the months it's been around. Nano Banana, maybe 30 minutes max.

I'm actually the same as you. It's not that long on these. Yeah, I've probably spent a lot of hours on MCPs, but, or like Cursor and all that, but not on these things. Yeah, so it's the same. But like, I remember I workshopped this with ChatGPT. I was like, man, I really want to play with these things, but this is the highest leverage thing I can do. And it knows what I'm focused on with my business. It's like, no, the highest leverage thing for you is to know enough about these to hire the right So that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye!