Nano Banana is proving to be a remarkable catalyst for the expansion of Google’s Gemini app, demonstrating its ability to not only capture attention but also sustain engagement across a diverse user base. In its third-quarter earnings report, Google revealed that the Gemini application had reached an impressive milestone of 650 million monthly active users. This represents an extraordinary rise of 200 million since July, indicating a period of rapid growth and renewed public interest. Although Gemini still lags behind ChatGPT’s substantially larger figure of roughly 800 million weekly users, the narrowing distance between the two suggests that Google’s platform is making consistent, meaningful progress in bridging that gap.
Much of this heightened user engagement can be traced back to the introduction of Google’s imaginative image-editing feature, popularly known as Nano Banana. Launched in August, this tool quickly evolved into a viral phenomenon, widely shared on social media and enthusiastically embraced by users experimenting with its creative capabilities. As Josh Woodward, Vice President of Google Labs and the executive overseeing the Gemini initiative, explained, Nano Banana’s success served as a gateway for many users to explore the broader functionality of the Gemini ecosystem. Once attracted by the novelty of the image tool, users began to engage with an array of auxiliary features, effectively deepening their interaction with the app.
Even more significant for Google is the qualitative shift in the user demographic. Woodward highlighted that the Gemini app is experiencing a substantial transformation in who uses it. The platform, once more heavily dominated by male users, is now seeing increasingly balanced participation, with a notable influx of female users and a surge among the younger 18–34 demographic. This is particularly encouraging for Google, which has publicly acknowledged its concern about younger audiences spending disproportionate amounts of time on entertainment-heavy platforms like TikTok and other social networks. The newfound engagement among this age group demonstrates that well-designed, creative, and technically sophisticated tools can effectively compete for the attention of younger digital natives.
In addition to demographic diversification, Gemini’s user base has expanded globally, reflecting a strong wave of international adoption. Woodward pointed out that one of Nano Banana’s most exciting viral trends—users fashioning intricate 3D figurines of themselves using the image tool—originated in Thailand. The craze rapidly spread to nearby nations such as Vietnam and Indonesia, where a combination of social media influence and local creativity propelled the feature into mainstream popularity. This cross-border momentum underscores how cultural trends, once ignited by a single influencer, can swiftly cascade through entire regions, giving Google’s innovations a broader reach than initially envisioned.
From a strategic standpoint, Google views such viral successes as more than short-term bursts of attention. The company anticipates that by drawing individuals into the app through playful and unexpected experiences like Nano Banana, it can convert transient curiosity into long-term engagement. As Woodward explained, the focus now turns toward analyzing metrics linked to “stickiness”—how often users return and what motivates them to stay. To that end, Google defines a monthly active user as someone who opens Gemini on Android or iOS or accesses the platform via the web and interacts meaningfully with it. Trivial exchanges, such as asking Gemini to set a timer, do not contribute to the measurement, reflecting the company’s intention to measure real, task-oriented engagement rather than superficial activity.
Looking ahead, Woodward suggested that Google may eventually report richer performance metrics—ones that capture the number of successful tasks completed for each user in a given day. Over time, this could range from a handful to potentially hundreds of interactions, reflecting the company’s larger aspiration to evolve Gemini beyond the role of a passive assistant and toward that of an active operator capable of executing complex sequences of actions. The ongoing Gemini 2 phase, according to Woodward, represents an intermediary step in this transformation, as Google experiments with practical implementations such as its Project Mariner browser agent and an experimental “Agent Mode” within the mobile app. While some of these early AI agents still display technical imperfections and limited reliability, they are important prototypes for building the next generation of capable digital operators.
At present, as Woodward observed, the industry as a whole remains at an early stage where AI agents can successfully carry out a modest sequence of three to five linked tasks involving external tools. Google’s ambition, however, is to transcend this limitation by engineering agents that can perform more than ten such interconnected actions with precision and consistency. Reaching that level of sophistication will demand sustained innovation, greater contextual understanding, and seamless integration across devices and services. Yet, by harnessing the viral momentum of Nano Banana and the sustained curiosity it has sparked, Google is positioning Gemini at the center of a rapidly maturing ecosystem—one that could eventually redefine what users expect from intelligent digital companions.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gemini-nano-banana-younger-users-app-exec-2025-10
