In the high-stakes theater of the AI wars, 2024 was the year of the debut. But according to Google’s newly released "Year in Search 2025" report, 2025 was the year of the takeover.

For the first time, "Gemini" has topped the list as Google’s number one trending search term globally, unseating sports spectacles and pop culture phenomena. The rise marks a definitive shift in the digital zeitgeist: artificial intelligence has graduated from a shiny novelty to a pervasive utility, and Google’s Gemini has successfully positioned itself as the default operating system for this new reality.

The question is no longer "What is AI?" but "How do I use it?"—and for billions of users in 2025, the answer started with Gemini.

by Kasun Illankoon, Editor in Chief at Tech Revolt

The Ecosystem Play: Ubiquity Over Novelty

Analysts point to a convergence of accessibility and capability as the primary driver behind Gemini’s surge. While competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT maintained a fiercely loyal user base, Google leveraged its most potent weapon: its ecosystem.

Throughout 2025, Google systematically replaced the passive "search bar" experience with the active "Gemini assistant" layer across Android, Workspace, and Chrome. The "AI Mode" in Search, which launched globally early in the year, forced users to interact with Gemini to navigate complex queries.

"Google didn't just ask users to try Gemini; they made it the path of least resistance," says Sarah Chen, a senior tech analyst at Forrester. "When you integrate the model into the keyboard, the email client, and the camera, you stop competing for 'monthly active users' and start competing for 'hourly active moments.' That is where Gemini won 2025."

This "front door" strategy explains the volume of searches. Users weren't just searching for the tool; they were searching for how to use it. Queries like "how to use Gemini with Docs," "Gemini vs. ChatGPT for coding," and "Gemini advanced features" skyrocketed, reflecting a user base moving from experimentation to daily reliance.

The "Nano Banana" Effect and Viral Creativity

While utility drove the baseline, it was a bizarre, unexpected viral trend that gave Gemini its pop-culture crown in 2025.

The report highlights the "Nano Banana" phenomenon—a reference to the internal codename for the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model. Users discovered that specific prompts could "jailbreak" the model’s creativity filters to produce hyper-stylized, surrealist 3D caricatures. The "Gemini saree trend prompt" and "3D model trend" dominated social feeds in India, Brazil, and Southeast Asia for months.

"It was the moment Gemini got 'cool'," notes digital culture reporter Jay Bonggolto. "Before Nano Banana, Gemini was seen as the 'safe' corporate option. Suddenly, it was the engine of the internet’s weirdest, funniest memes. That drove millions of young users to the platform who otherwise wouldn't have cared about 'multimodal reasoning'."

This viral explosion is evident in the search data, where specific prompt-engineering terms associated with Gemini’s image generation tools frequently outpaced general news queries.

The Tech Leap: Gemini 3 and the Age of Agents

Under the hood, the release of Gemini 3 in late 2025 cemented the platform's reputation for technical dominance. Unlike its predecessors, Gemini 3 was marketed less as a chatbot and more as an "agent"—a system capable of reasoning through multi-step tasks.

The search trends reflect this shift in capability. Users began searching for "Gemini agent workflows" and "Gemini for complex reasoning" rather than simple "write me an email" prompts. The integration of "Deep Think" capabilities allowed the model to tackle PhD-level science and math problems, leading to a surge in academic and enterprise adoption.

"We are seeing a move from 'generative' to 'agentic'," said Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a recent blog post celebrating the milestone. "People aren't just talking to Gemini; they are hiring it to do work."

The "Comparison Shopping" Spike

Interestingly, Gemini’s rise at the top of the charts was also fueled by skepticism. A significant portion of the search traffic came from users actively comparing models. "Gemini vs ChatGPT 2025" and "DeepSeek vs Gemini" were top breakout queries.

This indicates that brand loyalty in the AI space is fluid. Users are "model agnostics," constantly searching for the fastest, smartest, or cheapest option for their immediate task. By keeping Gemini constantly in the news cycle—whether through feature drops like Gemini Live or controversies over AI Overviews—Google ensured that it remained the benchmark against which all others were measured.

The Verdict

In 2025, Google managed to do what many doubted was possible: it turned a defensive crouch into an offensive landslide. By embedding Gemini into the very infrastructure of the web and allowing it to have its own moments of viral chaos, Google didn't just survive the platform shift—it directed it.

As we look toward 2026, the search bar that defined the last two decades of the internet is officially a relic. The era of the prompt is here, and for now, the world is asking Gemini for the answers.