Google's Gemini tops Apple's App Store, snagging lead spot from ChatGPT (www.cnbc.com)

Google’s Gemini app has surged to the No. 1 free spot in Apple’s App Store, overtaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT after a weekend spike in traffic driven by a new image-editing feature. The update—an iteration of Google’s “Flash” family called 2.5 Flash Image—introduced the viral “Nano Banana” tool, which blends multiple photos and uses prompts to create things like digital figurines from user uploads. Google says the feature helped attract about 13 million new users, brought total uploads to roughly 500 million images, and prompted temporary usage limits during peak demand; Gemini reported over 450 million monthly active users as of July. The win matters for the AI community because it signals Google gaining consumer traction against OpenAI through product-led feature velocity and multimodal capabilities. Technically, the change highlights the importance of strong image-understanding and creative-generation models (Flash 2.5) plus scalable infrastructure to handle massive media ingestion and real-time editing. It also raises operational and safety considerations—rate limiting, moderation, compute costs—while demonstrating how UX-driven innovations can shift market dynamics, attract investor interest, and contribute to Alphabet’s valuation gains (past $3 trillion). The momentum, combined with favorable regulatory news for Google’s browser business, strengthens Google’s platform position in the competitive generative-AI landscape.