Now switch chatgpt and gemini on them and see if they notice.

Ask 10 people on the street in 2009 about IE and Chrome and ask which one they knew.

The names don't even matter when everything is baked in.

That's the wrong question. See how many people know Google vs. ChatGPT. As popular as ChatGPT is, Google's the stronger brand.

thats just brand recognition.

The fact that people know Coca Cola doesnt mean they drink it.

But whether the competition will emerge as Pepsi or as RC-Cola is still tbd.

or that they would drink it if a well designed, delicious, but no HFCS nor sugar alternative were marketed with funding

It doesn’t?

That name recognition made Coca Cola into a very successful global corporation.

About 95% of people know the Coca Cola brand, about 70% of soda drinkers in the US drink one of its sodas, and about 40% of all people in the US drink it.

Knowing and using are not the same thing.

Your numbers indicate to me their name recognition drives a big part of their value.

40% of the US is a huge customer base.

The real money is for enterprise use (via APIs), so public perception is not as crucial as for a consumer product.

On the other hand...If you asked, 5-6-7 years ago, 100 people which of the following they used:

Slack? Zoom? Teams?

I'm sure you'd get a somewhat uniform distribution.

Ask the same today, and I'd bet most will say Teams. Why Teams? Because it comes with office / windows, so that's what most people will use.

Same logic goes for the AI / language models...which one are people going to use? The ones that are provided as "batteries included" in whatever software or platform they use the most. And for the vast majority of regular people / workers, it is going to be something by microsoft / google / whatever.

Ask them about Google or OpenAI and...