Google Integrates Gmail, YouTube, and Search Into Gemini
Google is supercharging its AI chatbot Gemini by integrating emails, photos, and information from across its app suite, providing users with personalized results.
Until now, Google has been relatively hands-off in applying the full weight of its app portfolio to Gemini, despite many of those services having billions of users. With this integration, Gemini will be able to pull from private data that competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude cannot access.
Beyond ingesting information into the chatbot, Gemini will also use data from emails, search history, and YouTube to better tailor responses to individual preferences. For example, if a user asks about a holiday, Gemini can reference booking confirmations and past search patterns to infer the type of trip they prefer.
“We’ve always wanted to build a personal assistant that’s actually useful in those ‘life happens’ moments, evolving Gemini from a very transactional assistant into one that knows you better and better over time,” said Animish Sivaramakrishnan, group product manager for Gemini personalization, via the Financial Times.
Personalization will roll out to Gemini subscribers in the United States this week, with plans to expand globally and to free users in the coming months.
Gemini is not the only chatbot offering personalization. ChatGPT, Claude, and others can already connect to Google and third-party apps to access calendars, emails, and other contextual data. The key difference here is that Google controls each of its own services, enabling tighter integration and more seamless data flow between its apps and the chatbot.
Having some of the most popular tools on the market helped Chrome become the dominant web browser, surpassing Internet Explorer. Google Search is the most widely used app in the world, with more than 4 billion users, while YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Drive each have over two billion users.
Google on the offensive
Since the launch of Gemini 3, perceptions around who is winning the AI race have begun to shift.
While OpenAI is still seen by some as the leader, both Google and Anthropic have gained market share from ChatGPT in recent months. Gemini has captured consumer traffic, while Claude has made inroads with enterprise customers. This reportedly prompted OpenAI to declare a code red, accelerate development of the latest ChatGPT release, and warn staff about near-term economic headwinds.
For Google, the momentum has translated into a sharp rise in its stock price. Analysts point to the company’s massive user base, dominant search engine, and global data center footprint as key advantages in the AI race. This has been further boosted by speculation that Google’s Tensor Processing Units could become an important chip option for AI data centers.
Major partnership steals
The performance of Gemini 3 may also explain why Apple signed a multi-year agreement with Google to power the next version of Siri. The two companies confirmed this week that Gemini models and Google Cloud technology will form the foundation of Apple Intelligence and Siri.
Before the deal was finalized, Apple was reportedly in talks with both OpenAI and Anthropic about powering the assistant.
The agreement is rumored to be worth around $1 billion per year to Google, a relatively modest sum given that Google already pays Apple more than $15 billion annually to remain the default search engine on iOS.
Related: Google is also tightening the reins on AI in sensitive areas. Here’s how the company is addressing health misinformation in its AI systems.
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