Just some numbers to show what OpenAI is against:
GMail users: nearing 2 billion
Youtube MAU: 2.5 billion
active Android devices: 4 billion (!)
Market cap: 3.8 trillion (at a P/E of 31)
So on one side you've got this behemoth with, compared to OpenAI's size, unlimited funding. The $25 bn per year OpenAI is after is basically a parking ticket for Google (only slightly exaggerating). Behemoth who came with Gemini 3 Pro "thinking" and Nano Banana (that name though) who are SOTA.And on the other side you've got the open-source weights you mentioned.
When OpenAI had its big moment HN was full of comments about how it was game over for Google for search was done for. Three years later and the best (arguably the best) model gives the best answer when you search... Using Google search.
Funny how these things turns out.
Google is atm the 3rd biggest cap in the world: only Apple and NVidia are slightly ahead. If Google is serious about its AI chips (and it looks like they are) and see the fuck-ups over fuck-ups by Apple, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Alphabet was to regain the number one spot.
That's the company OpenAI is fighting: a company that's already been the biggest cap in the entire world and that's probably going to regain that spot rather sooner than later and that happens to have crushed every single AI benchmark when Gemini 3 Pro came out.
I had a ChatGPT subscription. Now I'm using Gemini 3 Pro.