When ChatGPT broke onto the scene a number of years in the past, Google’s strategy to AI was to place the expertise in as many locations as doable, hoping it could resonate with customers. Initially, it did not work — ChatGPT had higher fashions, extra use circumstances, and superior model energy.
Over the previous yr, there’s been a powerful sense that the tide is popping. Gemini is the one AI chatbot to constantly achieve internet visitors share over the previous 12 months, chipping away at ChatGPT’s main lead (through SimilarWeb on X). On prime of that, Gemini 3 is right here, and it has been so well-received by customers that Google is taking inventive steps to satisfy the excellent demand.
Final month, I wrote that Google’s Veo 3 mannequin could not maintain a candle to OpenAI’s Sora 2 as a result of the corporate did not perceive how a lot wrapping AI fashions in a user-friendly, brand-positive package deal mattered.
Since then, we have seen Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Professional debut, and Google has regained my belief. Google confirmed that it may possibly constantly construct nice fashions, wrap them in participating apps, and create catchy manufacturers for its AI fashions. Because of this, I am a believer.
Gemini 3 exhibits Google can keep on the prime
If we have discovered something through the years, it is that constructing one nice AI mannequin is not sufficient for sustained success. OpenAI was as soon as the one one with a top quality giant language mannequin (LLM), and now its GPT-5.1 mannequin sits exterior the highest 5 on the LMArena leaderboard. DeepSeek blew up in January 2025 and pale into obscurity once more simply as shortly when different corporations caught up.
So, when Gemini 2.5 Professional dominated the LMArena and WebDev Enviornment leaderboards, I nonetheless wanted to see extra. Positive sufficient, Gemini 2.5 Professional was ultimately unseated by fashions from xAI, Anthropic, and OpenAI. That is why Gemini 3 Professional’s return to the highest of the chart after Gemini 2.5 Professional was dethroned is an efficient signal of Google’s consistency.
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Gemini 3 Professional stays the top-ranked textual content mannequin on the LMArena leaderboard. Google has the very best mannequin within the textual content, imaginative and prescient, text-to-image, picture enhancing, search, text-to-video, and image-to-video classes. That is an excellent displaying — the solely class Google does not lead is WebDev Enviornment. Gemini 3 Professional debuted within the prime spot, however was bumped right down to second place by Claude Opus 4.5.
Google’s physique of labor now evokes a variety of confidence. It is not simply able to making industry-leading fashions. It is also able to constantly constructing new ones whereas dealing with threats from competing corporations.
Google is aware of there’s way more to AI than fashions
One other promising aspect of the Gemini 3 launch is the mannequin’s availability. It debuted instantly throughout the Gemini app, and AI Mode in Search, and Google’s developer instruments — together with Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. It is the primary time a brand new AI mannequin has been out there in Google Search, the corporate’s flagship software program product, on day one.
A mannequin is just pretty much as good as its availability and person interfaces, and Google is telling us it understands that with the Gemini 3 rollout. It made a number of new methods to work together with Gemini 3 alongside the brand new mannequin.
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There’s the Gemini Agent, an agentic platform that may take actions in your behalf inside and past the Google ecosystem. AI Mode in Search added generative UIs, that are customized and interactive visuals created with Gemini 3 in actual time. Most significantly, Google launched a brand-new app with an agent-first built-in growth atmosphere (IDE) in Antigravity.
Lastly, Google clearly will get that AI branding issues
OpenAI confirmed simply how a lot branding issues within the AI race with Sora, the viral app for AI-generated movies. Seemingly in a single day, the complete notion of AI movies modified. What as soon as was known as AI “slop” all of a sudden grew to become enjoyable and fascinating. Google should have paid consideration, as a result of Nano Banana follows the very same blueprint.
Nano Banana Professional is actually the Gemini 3 Professional Picture mannequin, however the latter identify is not very enjoyable, is it? As an alternative, Google gave this text-to-image mannequin a unusual identify and a banana emoji. I don’t know what Nano Banana means, or why there is a banana emoji plastered in all places, together with in Google Messages.
Nevertheless, I do know what Nano Banana is not. It is not named like a scary AI image-generation mannequin. It is not branded like an enterprise or growth software. Nano Banana creates AI pictures for the on a regular basis particular person, identical to Sora did for movies.
Gemini already has a reasonably sturdy model, as it is a fixture on Android and Put on OS, and shortly could have a stronger presence in Google Dwelling and Android Auto. Nevertheless, Google’s generative picture and video fashions simply fell into the “slop” class earlier than Nano Banana made picture fashions quirky and approachable.
Gemini 3 is a serious turning level for Google’s AI efforts
Gemini 3 could not have come at a greater time for Google. The corporate wanted to indicate it understood what actually makes an important AI ecosystem, and it did simply that.
Gemini 3 Professional and Gemini 3 Professional Picture exhibit that Google can reply when challenged with new fashions from xAI, Anthropic, and OpenAI. New apps like Google Antigravity are proof that the corporate is aware of the best way you work together with AI fashions is simply as vital because the fashions themselves. And crucially, Nano Banana is a powerful sign that the Mountain View corp. lastly grasps that model energy is social forex within the AI race.
Google’s AI efforts are firing on all cylinders, and I am unable to wait to see what else it builds.
