Tech Brew Ride Home - Dr. ChatGPT Isn’t Quite There Yet

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Is the long war between Google and Epic Games finally over? OpenAI wants you to know its revenue numbers are also stellar. Maybe ChatGPT isn’t so great at medical advice. Maybe the chip shortage isn’t great for Nintendo specifically. And maybe the MacBook Nano isn’t great for the Windows ecosystem generally. Google Revamps Android App Stores to Resolve Antitrust Claims (Bloomberg) Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google until 2032 (The Verge) Google’s AI-powered workspace is now available to more users in Search (The Verge) OpenAI Tops $25 Billion in Annualized Revenue as Anthropic Narrows Gap (The Information) ChatGPT Health 'under-triaged' half of medical emergencies in a new study (NBC News) Nintendo Switch 2 Users Face Storage Woes as Memory Crisis Bites (Bloomberg) I can't believe it: Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo just lit a monstrous fire under the Windows laptop market — Microsoft better be panicking (Windows Central) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Welcome to the TechBrew right home for Thursday, March 5th, 26. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is the long war between Google and Epic Games finally over. Open the eye wants you to know its revenue numbers are also stellar. Maybe chat GPT isn't so great at medical advice.

Maybe the chip shortage isn't great for Nintendo specifically. Maybe the MacBook Nano isn't great for the Windows ecosystem generally. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Is this whole saga finally at an end? Google has announced an Android App Store program and lower developer fees to resolve Epic's antitrust litigation and also comply with new rules in Europe and elsewhere. Quoting Bloomberg, these announcements are not about just doing what's required. Samir Samat, Google's vice president of product development said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

The moves go, quote, well beyond what is being required. required by legal changes in Europe and the UK, he said. Under the proposal, other companies can register with Google pay a one-time fee and offer an app store on Android, Samat said. Google will also lower the fees it charges developers from a standard 30% to as low as 15 or 10% on recurring subscriptions, he said. Fee changes in the US, UK, and EU are expected to go into effect by June, with changes in Australia, Korea, and Japan before the end of 2026. Epic Games, which had been involved in a long-running antitrust case with Google said the new policies would eliminate the Fortnite maker's concerns with the Android platform and resolve litigation in the US-UK, Australia and elsewhere.

Anybody can launch a competitive app store now, Epic Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney said in a joint interview with Samat. Alphabet doesn't offer standalone figures for how much revenue is attributable to its Android operating system or the Google Play Store. Documents from the U.S. litigation with Epic indicated the technology giants app store brought in $14.66 billion in sales in 2020. Analysts had estimated that changes to its app store required by new regulations and the litigation could result in a $1 billion loss in gross profit, end quote. Funny little addendum to that, though, quoting the verge. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world's most valuable and

powerful companies, almost all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, insulting them again and again, crooked, deceitful, insanely sneaky, calling Android a fake open platform, calling both companies gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with, telling me how Google's Project Hug was an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale. But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It's right there in the binding term sheet for his settlement with Google. On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic's rights to sue and disparage the company, he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google's App Store policies. He can't criticize Google's app store practices. In fact, he has to praise them. The contract states that Epic believes that the

Google and Android platform with the changes in this term sheet are pro-competitive and a model for app store slash platform operations and will make good faith efforts to advocate for the same. He may even have to appear in other courts around the world to defend this deal with Google, and Google gets to make sure his public statements are supportive of the deal from here on out, end quote. News you can use. Google has expanded its canvas workspace to everyone in the U.S. using Google Search's AI mode so they can get the latest info to organize plans, draft documents, and more. Quoting the Verge. Google is bringing Canvas to everyone in the U.S. using AI mode and search.

The feature opens up a dedicated workspace within its AI-powered search tool, allowing it to use the latest information from Search to organize plans, develop tools, and draft documents in a panel alongside your chat. Though Google initially launched Canvas inside its Gemini app as a way to create documents and code in real time, it later tested the feature in AI mode but only for visualizing travel plans. Now you can use Canvas in AI mode for tasks related to creative writing and coding as well, giving you the ability to view an AI-generated dashboard laying out information related to your prompt or an interactive prototype of a tool you're developing. You can try out the feature by navigating to AI mode in search,

selecting the plus button inside the chat window, and then choosing Canvas. From there, you can describe what you want to create, and Google will display the results in a panel on the right side of your screen. This feature is currently only available in English, end quote. Open AI wants you to know, I'm assuming this is a strategic leak after yesterday's Anthropic numbers, that they hit $25 billion in annualized revenue by the end of February, up from $21.4 billion at the end of 2020.

25. Quoting the information, that's a 17% increase from the $21.4 billion in annualized revenue the company was generating at the end of the year, according to the person and a second person with knowledge of the figures. OpenAI is still generating more revenue than its younger rival Anthropic, though the difference between the arch rivals has been narrowing. Anthropics' annualized revenue recently topped $19 billion, up nearly three times from the end of last year, and up 36% from just two weeks ago. OpenAI calculates annualized revenue by multiplying the last four weeks revenue by 12. If OpenAI calculated the metric based on revenue spikes just in the last week, OpenAI's annualized revenue would be roughly $30 billion, one of the people said.

Anthropics' recent success in selling AI models that handle coding tasks has helped it quickly shrink its revenue gap with OpenAI. In 2025, OpenAI generated about three times more revenue than Anthropic. Now there is basically only a $5 billion gap between them. While Chad GPT contributes to the vast majority of OpenAI revenue, the company expects an increasing portion of its revenue will come from business customers as well as new products such as advertising. OpenAI has been in talks with ad tech firm The Trade Desk on a partnership that could expand its advertising clients, for instance. In recent years, both companies blew past the revenue projections they shared with investors. The recent figures suggest they will do so again this year

as businesses increase their spending on the technology, including for coding tasks. OpenAI recently hiked its revenue forecast for the next five years with plans to generate as much as $284 billion in revenue by 2030. But it also raised its forecast for cash burn, predicting it would spend $665 billion in server-related costs through the end of the decade. While both companies recently projected they would each burn tens of billions of dollars over the next couple of years as they spend more to rent cloud servers and chips to develop their technology, the revenue growth surge could propel their respective initial public offerings as soon as this year. OpenAI recently selected law firms for its proposed IPO the information has reported. The number of

chat GPT users grew to about 920 million weekly active users by the end of February, according to the person. That's a gain of roughly 10 million from a few weeks earlier, though. It's still short of its goal of getting 1 billion users by the end of 2025. The company's release last summer of chat GPT5, which generated complaints from some users over its colder personality than its predecessor, GPD4-0, appeared to contribute to the growth slowdown, end quote. Peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless.

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U.N. must be 21 to enter. But this is not great for another potential growth area, quoting NBC News. Chat GPT Health, Open AIs New Health, focused chatbot frequently underestimated the severity of medical emergencies, according to a study published last week in the journal Nature Medicine. Previous research has shown that chat GPT can pass medical exams and nearly two-thirds of physicians reported using some form of AI in 2024, but other research has shown that chatbots, including chat GPT, don't provide reliable

medical advice. ChatGPT health is separate from OpenAI's general chatGPT chatbot. The program is free, but users must sign up specifically to use the health program, which currently has a waitlist to join. Opening Eye says chat GPT health uses a more secure platform so users can safely upload personal medical information. In the study, the researchers fed 60 medical scenarios to chat GPT health. The chat bot's responses were compared with the responses of three physicians who also reviewed the scenarios and triaged each one based on medical guidelines and clinical expertise. Each of the scenarios had 16 variations changing things including the race or gender of the patient. The variations were designed to, quote, produce the exact same result,

according to lead study author Dr. Ashwin Ramoswamy, an instructor of urology at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. This meant that an emergency case involving a man should still be classified as an emergency if the patient was a woman. The study didn't find any significant differences in the results based on demographic changes. The researchers, though, found that ChachyPT Health under-triaged 51.6% of emergency cases, that is, instead of of recommending the patient go to the emergency room, the bot recommended seeing a doctor within 24 to 48 hours. Compared with the doctors in the study, the bot also over-triaged 64.8% of non-urgent cases recommending a doctor's appointment when it wasn't necessary. The bot told a

patient with a three-day sore throat to see a doctor in 24 to 48 hours when at home care was sufficient. There's no logic for me as to why it was making recommendations in some areas versus others, Ramoswami said, end quote. The soaring cost of memory chips is beginning to take a bite out of gaming, quoting Bloomberg. The additional cost is denting consumer appetite for new Switch 2 games. That's a problem for Nintendo, which needs to sell as many games as possible to make up for razor-thin margins on the consoles, which retail for around $450 and are already under pressure from U.S. tariffs as well as a likely rise in shipping costs related to the conflict in the

Middle East. I used to buy games on a whim without paying attention to storage, said Shinsuki, Hasagawa, an avid gamer in Tokyo with dozens of games for the Switch and its successor. But now I need to make sure that games I buy are really ones I want to play because the space is filling up so quickly at a pace that I didn't imagine. Nintendo's storage problem is weighing on software demand alongside factors such as game-launch timings. Initial software sales momentum for the Switch 2, the world's fastest selling console, lags behind the original switches. As of end of December, when Switch

2 sales hit 17.37 million units, the average number of games purchased per console came to 2.18, according to Bloomberg calculations based on company filings. When the original switch reached a similar hardware sales milestone in March of 2018, that figure stood at 3.88. The Switch 2 is able to run higher-end games and their file sizes are growing accordingly. Square Inix will release its final Fantasy 7 rebirth for the Switch 2 in June, requiring an estimated 102.5 gigabytes, roughly 40% of the console's 256 gigabytes of internal storage. That's as the cost to expand storage continues to climb, exacerbated by Nintendo's use of a new format with limited supply. Japanese storage memory maker Next Storage now sells 256 gigabyte microSD express cards that are compatible with

the Switch 2 for $85, a 30% hike from when the console was released in June. June. Prices for comparable storage products are also rising in the U.S., where tariffs are adding to consumer costs. Besides consumer unhappiness about having to spend $50 plus the cost of a new game for micro-SD cards that can provide additional storage, the problem poses a long-term risk for the company, said Pelham Smithers, managing director at Pelham Smithers Associates. If the Switch 2 gets a reputation for just being a vehicle for Nintendo games, then third-parties may stop trying, which can start a domino effect in terms of consumer industry. interest, he said, end quote. No new Apple products today. I guess that's done for now, though the

rumor is a new chat GPT might be dropping it any minute, so maybe it'll be out by the time you hear this. But back to Apple. No less an authority than Windows Central says that Apple's new MacBook Neo is a serious threat to OEMs like HP, Lenovo, and Dell, and their $599 laptops seem inferior. and Windows 11's reputation is at an all-time low, a sort of perfect storm. Quote, you can definitely get a more capable, perhaps even more powerful Windows laptop for $599. It would likely have more RAM and storage, but to most mainstream laptop buyers, none of this truly matters. Owning a Mac is less about the raw specs and more about it being a Mac and not a Windows PC. One of the reasons Windows laptops are so popular is that they're cheap.

MacBooks have historically never been considered to be affordable laptops, but that changes with the MacBook Neo. Because of this, someone who had no choice but to buy a mid-range Windows laptop in the past now has the option of buying a MacBook. And because Windows 11's reputation is at an all-time low, people are looking to jump ship from Windows more than ever. With millions of Windows 10 users running unsupported hardware, a 599 MacBook is going to look ever so appetizing. The timing couldn't be better for Apple. In fact, it's clear that Apple is anticipating a lot of Windows users to make the switch. It even has a dedicated Switch to MacTab on the MacBook Neo page, advertising just how easy it is to move from a Windows

PC to a MacBook Neo. For those of us who don't like MacOS, nothing really changes today, but for the large percentage of people who only use a Windows laptop because they had to or couldn't afford a MacBook, there's now an affordable and easy way of attaining a new MacBook from Apple. Windows OEMs are going to feel the heat, too. For years, OEMs have gotten away with shipping what can essentially be described as e-waste in this price bracket, with a few exceptions, of course. new 599 laptops from HP, Lenovo, Dell, or any of the other big-name brands aren't going to hold a candle to the desirability of a brand-new Mac laptop at the same price. Although when the Asis Zenbook A14, one of our top Windows laptops drops to $599, it's an amazing value. If I were Microsoft,

I'd be on full-blown panic alert at this point. Unlike ChromeOS, which was never desirable even at a lower price point, a full-blown MacOS laptop at $599 is a serious threat to Windows. Young people are going to flock to this, and it's going to sell like hotcakes, not giving Windows laptops even a second thought. As those young people grow up, they're only going to want to use Mac laptops as they become adults, and Windows will slowly but surely lose all relevance outside specific use cases such as gaming and enterprise. As things currently stand, I can't help but think this is nothing but bad news for the Windows ecosystem and Microsoft. I'd honestly be shocked if this 599 MacBook doesn't make a dent in the Windows laptop market, end quote.

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