Claude Code has largely won individual developer mindshare and has been on top ever since it came out. The benchmarks change, but almost nobody opts to use anything other than Claude IME when I ask them. Enterprise is more competitive since they care about costs and other things, but developers leaning towards Claude puts a thumb on the scales there.
The product doesn't have much lock in, so it is possible to dislodge Claude, and Anthropic could (and some may argue is likely to) just shoot themselves in the foot again and again and again, but Google has never been particularly good at enterprise sales, and they have never actually been at the frontier of intelligence.
I think Google's incentives have mostly about building models for their products, which makes them focus more on the cheap end, and while they need that, it feels like the Innovator's Dilemma is biting them here.
I own a lot of Google stock from working there in the past and have been quite happy about their trajectory up until the last 6 months, but I am getting pretty antsy about their AI story these days.
Claude Code's success is not due to the agent but because the model is considered the best for programming and is very heavily subsidized, compared to pay as you go API prices. Consumers and Enterprise are not really locked in and will go where it makes the most sense.
I think they have almost no loyalty by actual developers.
Basically you may choose to drink brand A water bottle, brand B water bottle or tap water. Oh and you might choose the glass water bottle if you use API/Fable.
When we work trial people, 100% of people ask for Claude rather than Codex or anything else.
When I talk to people at non-AI tech events everyone basically says they use Claude and have not tried an alternative.
Developers writ large are actually not that interested in trying multiple tools, they like customizing their chosen tool and tweaking it forever.
I think developers are as susceptible to brand marketing as everyone else. It's why almost everyone has a Macbook.
It's not true, it's just a play for margin.
Where does that 90% figure come from?
At this rate, if Google has a flagship model, you're better off plugging it into a competitor's tooling than hope Google figures out how to use it.