It's still there. For Joe Shmoe, in terms of general purpose, ask it a question, LLM use, Perplexity is solidly in the following lineup, as I understand it:
- Perplexity: This one has been promoted on (insert general audience media skewing toward the older set) enough to be a household name still.
- ChatGPT: General people in some demographics (see immediately above) are averse to this, on account of negative publicity its parent company has received. (Still very strong popularity and positive sentiment in some demographics, though)
- Claude: Some semi-literates have glommed onto this one, possibly as a result of its more recent success among the developer set.
- Grok: People can be either for or against, based on how they feel about its owning company and its ownership; no more need be said
- Gemini: Again, if you are in the universe of its owning company (or decidedly not), the draw (or repulsion) can be strong here.
For general LLM use, the above are all about the same. To be clear, this is just me shooting from the hip for how each offering might be viewed. IMO, it's not a bad idea to submit the same input to each and see how they compare, if one is so inclined.
Funny how you didn't even mention MS Copilot, which many of my friends who work for big corporations seem to have been forced to use at work, and as a consequence, also for personal use.