I Tried to Switch From ChatGPT to Gemini [Raw Session]

00:00 — Why Gemini Made Sense

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.

So the other day I tried to switch from ChatGPT to Gemini, and on paper it made complete sense to me.

Google has Search. It has YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Docs, Drive. It just has basically my entire life for the last however long Google’s been around.

And the plan also came with large amounts of extra storage. Plus, the entire thing could be shared with up to five people, and that was a big selling point to me because now my kids can take advantage of it.

They could use it because they use their Gmail, they run their business online, and I thought it’d be a great thing for them.

Plus, a little side bonus: it gave me limited ads on YouTube. So I was very excited for that.

And I already use Gemini. I use it a lot. Basic searches, YouTube research. I use it a lot for second opinions. I use it for Notebook. I love it.

And I was very excited to see what unlocking the model in the paid version would get me.

01:18 — Slowing Down and Questioning the Subscription

But at the same—and at the same time—I’ve been noticing a lot of friction with ChatGPT lately.

I was getting outdated information often enough that I felt like I had to double-check everything.

I also wasn’t using it for coding as heavily as I have been before. Like, I’ve done videos on burnout and fatigue and trying to keep up, so I’ve been trying to slow down.

So my focus has become more: take my time with it. So I didn’t need as many tokens. I didn’t need as much heavy usage for the building part because I want to let that focus go towards my actual job and work, which I want to do.

I love my job and I love what I do, and not burn myself out like I’ve been doing.

So this is why I started wondering: maybe I don’t need to pay for the higher subscription for ChatGPT anymore.

Maybe Gemini was looking like it could cover most of my life in a single plan, and I was able to share it, and it seemed like the switch was going to be quite easy.

02:31 — Going All In

But once I actually tried—I made the switch, and to be honest, I went all in. I bought the year because it gave me an even deeper discount. It gave me instant access, and it gave me a little bit more.

But once I actually started trying to use Gemini, pretty quickly the advantages that I saw when I compared it, and what I was hoping I was going to get, were not the advantages I was feeling.

And that’s what this video is really going to be about.

This isn’t me trying to prove that ChatGPT is better than Gemini for everyone. That’s 100% not true. Everyone has their own caveat. Everyone has their own choice. Everyone has different workflows.

And I don’t think these tools stay still long enough to make even that statement anyway.

Things change so quickly. Things move all the time in this new era that we’re part of.

03:33 — Familiarity and Being Understood

So this is more about what it takes to switch away from a tool once it’s become part of how you work and how you live.

Familiarity. I really have trouble saying [unclear] sometimes.

And that’s just me. That’s just the way I am.

And I love that I can use—and that’s another thing—ChatGPT, and even Gemini to some extent. And Gemini, not as good because it doesn’t know me as well for these scripts and these videos and stuff, or as much random chats.

But ChatGPT knows me. It knows I can’t spell. It knows I have a hard time speaking, and it corrects those things based off the history that we have.

And again, that is being familiar with me, and that’s part of it.

But in that case, it wasn’t the main—that’s not the mainly about…

Familiarity is part of that, but in my case it wasn’t mainly about history or ChatGPT knowing me.

Here we go.

04:33 — The Output Was Different

The output itself was different.

I could see something usable from ChatGPT, and with Gemini, when I was doing the same thing, it felt like I was trying to turn scraps into the thing I’d asked for.

It wasn’t giving me what I wanted. It was giving me piecemeal. It was giving me—not even nuggets. It was just giving me—I don’t want to say fool’s gold, but it just didn’t feel right.

So before I switched, though, Gemini really did look like the logical choice.

Like, it really felt it was going to give me everything I wanted, and it was going to do it.

It was a little more expensive, I think, for the plan I was going to go to, but I was able to share it. I was able to integrate it into everything that I use on a day-to-day basis, and that’s really what I was so excited about.

05:25 — Current Information and the Google Ecosystem

But ChatGPT’s—because ChatGPT’s biggest weakness for me was current information.

I use it every day, but if I ask it about something recent, I often had to verify the answer. I would ask it to search it again, check the date, or confirm the details somewhere else.

One example was SpaceX. It felt like it thought SpaceX was still a private company, and that’s just a random thing.

So then when you see that, it’s like, can I trust everything [unclear]? So you end up having to review, revisit, and double-check everything it says.

So you’re using it more as a guide rather than truth.

Whereas Gemini is connected to Google, so my assumption was that current information and search would naturally be one of its strengths.

Then there was the rest of the ecosystem that Google has. Like planning a trip. Google has the places, reviews, the driving distances, flight access, hotels, and Maps. Maps was a big one.

And I use it for research and videos. Like, Google owns YouTube. So, like, doing videos, finding trends, going through what I’ve already done. It should be pretty straightforward.

And to be able to create—go through my email. It should be able to create a document. It should be able to, like, create a spreadsheet, link it all together.

And to me, that’s a massive advantage in the theory that Gemini was going to win this.

And the plan was more than just Gemini. There was also the addition of the storage, sharing with my family, and access to more tools across Google.

I wasn’t just comparing one chatbot subscription with another. I was looking at the larger package and thinking this might be more useful to the whole family.

07:13 — Familiarity Has Value

And I’m not—I’m also not someone who refuses to switch just because I’m used to something.

I do become comfortable with tools. I use an iPhone, and I don’t enjoy switching to Android. I hate using an Android.

But I can use an Android if I have to, but I do notice the friction.

I’m comfortable with my internet provider because I understand the tools, the service, the people, the system. Like, I’ve tried to switch before and I was not happy. And where I live, there’s not that many options.

Like Fire TV. Like, I don’t want to use a native cable box. My TVs all use Fire TV. I don’t want to switch to anything else. I love it. It’s my favorite thing for getting all my content.

And it’s a big selling point for me on which cable company I go with, because if they have the app or whatever…

That familiarity has value. It removes small decisions and lets me get on with what I was trying to do.

But I’m still willing to change. I just need a good reason.

A different product has to give me something that makes the adjustment worthwhile. It cannot only be cheaper, and it cannot only look better in a list of features.

I’m willing to pay more money for a better experience, if that experience makes the work easier or gives me better results.

08:38 — Paying Didn’t Change the Results

And that was the test for Gemini.

And almost immediately I started running into the same limitations—oh my goodness—I had experienced with the free version.

The paid plan gave me higher access, more benefits around Gemini and the ecosystem, but the everyday results didn’t suddenly become more useful.

I was still getting answers that felt thin. I was still having to go back repeatedly to explain what was missing.

The Google ecosystem was all around it, but I didn’t feel as if those pieces were working together.

09:10 — Planning a Family Trip

And the clearest example is a trip I’m planning for the family.

I wanted to lay out all the places we were considering going. Break it all down by days and stuff like that.

And I imagined being able to plot locations on a map, separate them by day, and see whether the schedule made sense.

Which places should go which day? Which one fits with what? Link it all together. Give me multiple maps. Give me a single map. Get different layers.

I just figured it’d be straightforward. Google owns Gemini. Google owns Maps.

It couldn’t give me the map I pictured in my mind. I asked several times. It said, “I don’t have access.”

And to be fair, ChatGPT couldn’t create the exact map either, which is fine. I expected that.

And this isn’t—so it’s not a point for ChatGPT.

The difference is that I expected Gemini to be able to do it because the map and the AI both belong to the same company. That connection was part of what I thought I was buying.

What happened instead was ChatGPT still handled more of the surrounding work in a way I could use.

It could research locations, create the daily list, organize a spreadsheet, build the documents, and help me keep refining the plan.

It didn’t deliver everything, but the output moved the work forward.

With Gemini, I kept seeing the potential without experiencing the benefits.

10:31 — YouTube and Scripts That Fell Short

The same thing happened with YouTube. Google owns it.

So I expected Gemini to be especially useful for my channel. I thought it would be able to look at my website, go through all my YouTube videos, and understand what I had already made.

And help me develop ideas that actually fit in the direction of the channel. Come up with these topics, help me do scripts, help format them.

But YouTube Studio, for some reason, still seems to be its own thing. It wasn’t part of the package.

And so Gemini wasn’t getting access to the analytics in there. It wasn’t giving access to the things that helped me build it out a little bit better.

So when I asked for video ideas or tried to build scripts, the results often felt generic and incomplete.

It wouldn’t give me what looked like an outline for a 15-minute video. But parts labeled as two or three minutes might contain only a couple sentences.

That isn’t a small difference in interpretation. Two sentences are not two minutes of natural speech. Sometimes they aren’t even 20 seconds.

I would point that out and ask it to expand the section and give me realistic timings. Like, redo it or tell me what the real times are.

It would agree, make another attempt, and still come back way off. And I’d keep prompting it.

But at that point, I was spending my time trying to make the tool understand the size and shape of the output I wanted instead of working on the actual idea.

ChatGPT normally gets much closer, [unclear] me having to go back and forth, do whatever. It understands that a calm 15-minute video and what needs to be in there.

It gives me something I can read aloud, react to, cut apart, and turn into my own.

It isn’t perfect, and I still rewrite it, as you can see in this video. This video was written by ChatGPT, but I am going off script quite often. I’m all over the place.

But ChatGPT gives me the material rather than the description of the material.

That difference matters more to me than which company has access to the largest amount of data.

12:47 — Having Data and Producing Useful Work

The image results felt similar too, because Gemini could give me the images, but I wasn’t getting images or thumbnails that were as useful for what I wanted.

And again, this wasn’t about one failed prompt. It was the repeated feeling that I had bought access to—I bought access to a larger ecosystem while the part directly in front of me still wasn’t producing better work.

Now, I want to be fair about Google’s advantage because I do think it’s real, and it’s going to make a massive difference in the future.

It’s probably making a massive difference now.

Google has an enormous amount of information. It has public information through Search, Maps, YouTube. Even though I didn’t see this, those things are connected within the company.

And it connects all that with your personal information through your Gmail and your Drive. And that is a major, major advantage.

But having the data and turning the data into a useful personal experience are different things.

In my case, personal Gmail is not a large part of my working life. My work is handled elsewhere.

I keep my personal inbox as simple as possible with filters, and I use other tools like OpenClaw, n8n, to help me monitor my email and tag things and push it to the side.

So even if Gemini can do more inside Gmail—which it can, and I’ve seen it do it—that feature does not solve any important problem for me.

Someone running their business through it, yeah, it makes a big difference. It makes perfect sense.

I have a friend who uses Gemini. He loves it. He pays for it. But his email and his inbox are his job.

The Google interaction—integrations—could matter far more, like, to him than it does to me.

But even then, the integration still has to appear in the work. It has to save time, improve the result, or let you do something that was difficult before.

The fact that all the services have Google logos does not automatically make them feel like one intelligent system.

14:48 — What ChatGPT Helped Me Do

And that’s where I think ChatGPT currently has managed for me.

Like, in that situation, ChatGPT has access to my Google ecosystem. It already created a spreadsheet. It already plotted everything out.

It gave me the links to the map location in a spreadsheet. It made a spreadsheet with multiple days and broke them all up. It listed everything. Like, it did all these things in the Google ecosystem.

And it was also able to check my Gmail to find my flight itinerary. It was able to go find my Airbnb. It could do those things for me.

I just expected Gemini to do it a lot more seamlessly. A lot more—a lot more ease, more intuitive.

But anyway, the thing is, why ChatGPT?

So this is where I think ChatGPT currently has managed for me.

It doesn’t own my search history. It doesn’t own YouTube or Maps. It doesn’t control my email and documents in the background.

But the interaction feels more polished for me. The output feels more tailored to what I asked for, and I can usually move from an idea to something usable with less friction.

ChatGPT itself has changed a lot. There is regular ChatGPT, Codex, Work, different models, tools, connectors, different ways to approach the same task.

Sometimes I have to pay more attention to where I am and which [unclear] I’m using.

It’s not the single simple product it once felt like, but despite those changes, I still tend to get the kind of output I’m looking for.

I can get a spreadsheet, document, research. I can get all these things.

I may have to move between different parts of the product, but the finished result is usually closer to something I can use.

16:32 — Why I Switched Back

And that’s why I switched back.

It wasn’t because ChatGPT had years of secret knowledge about me that I couldn’t replace. It wasn’t because I believe Gemini is bad, and it wasn’t because I’m loyal to one company.

I switched back because the supposed advantage of Gemini remained mostly theoretical in my actual workflow.

The free version had already been useful to me for quick searches, YouTube ideas, and getting different perspectives.

Paying for it didn’t change its role. It was still useful as another tool, but it didn’t become the place where I want to do the main work.

17:08 — A Second Tool Isn’t Always a Primary Tool

And maybe that’s the mistake I made.

I assumed that because Gemini was valuable as a second tool, the paid version would naturally become a better primary tool.

Those are not the same things.

A tool can be worth using without being the tool you want to build your whole process around.

Gemini can still help me check current information, look at a topic different, or research something connected to Google.

Claude can be useful when I want deep second review. When I want to work, do deep code, code reviews, architectural designs, security designs.

Claude, I love using that for that. And it’s part of our work ecosystem because I am finding ChatGPT—in my mind, it’s better. But that’s just me.

ChatGPT—and ChatGPT remain on top of all that. It’s going to remain my place, my personal place, where I take all of that and actually shape it into the thing I’m making.

This isn’t the clean one-subscription answer I was looking for, but it’s closer to how I actually work.

18:10 — The Value of What Already Works

There’s also a larger point here about switching anything.

We often treat familiarity as if it’s laziness. We tell ourselves we should be willing to try the new phone, move to the cheaper provider, replace the software, or rebuild the workflow.

Sometimes that is true. Sometimes we are holding on to something only because changing feels uncomfortable.

But familiarity can also be part of the value of a product.

Knowing where things are, understanding how the tool responds, and trusting the shape of the result all save time.

A replacement doesn’t merely have to match the old tool’s feature list. It has to overcome the practical value of everything that already works.

And for me, Gemini didn’t do that.

18:58 — I Need to Feel the Advantage

Google may eventually connect all of its information in a way that makes the advantage impossible for me to ignore.

And if it can genuinely understand the public work on my channel, use my information with all the right permissions, and connect the maps for my trip planning and YouTube and turn it into better output, I would try to switch again.

I’m not against—not switching. I’m not committed to ChatGPT forever. These products are changing too quickly for that.

But there has to be a real reason to move.

Not just a discount. Not just more storage. Not because I can share it. Not just the promise that everything is part of the same ecosystem.

I need to feel the advantage when I sit down and try to get something done.

With Gemini, I didn’t. At least not yet.

I would love to hear comments on the AI tools you use. Which ones bring you value? What ones do you use for different tasks? And which ones are you willing to pay for?

Thanks for watching. Hope you like this one. Bye.