Read the article?

"These 1 billion users may also be encountering Gemini in all those places, but that’s not the MAU metric. Pichai is talking only about people who are opening the Gemini app or visiting the Gemini web interface to enter a prompt or access Gemini Live. If you used Gemini only once in the past month, you are part of this cohort"

AI Overviews are not accounted for.

I'm pretty sure that Google replaced a shortcut for the hardware buttons on my phone to open some kind of Gemini interface in a security update and I had to change it back. And Gemini was auto-migrated from Google Assistant as the default digital assistant at a similar time(?) That alone would account for millions of users interacting with the app accidentally/unwittingly.

So as usual with these type of consumer choice/preference claims, it's sensible to be cynical. At least the Pepsi Challenge couldn't secretly swap out your water tap at home for a soda fountain, record you drinking it and claiming you prefer it to Coke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge

That seems so impossible that it's absurd. I hear people talking about one thing. ChatGPT, nobody even mentions Gemini. If it's Gemini they're using, nobody is aware it is Gemini, and the only place that happens is on the google search page, not a Gemini app.

Though I guess it's possible all their 1B users are concentrated in India and China and I'd never know.