Well, there’s hardly a definite answer. The two are meant to be used for different things and appeal to very different communities, to put it as simply as possible.
Ethereum is now well known for its enthusiastic user base who got into the cryptocurrency world for the idea of decentralized community based solutions. One of the key features are smart contracts that allow people to create crowd funded projects and in the same time ask for input from the investors as well as organize voting on ideas that should be implemented.
So, Ethereum is mostly about collaborating between peers on projects that they believe in. There are also other uses to the smart contract feature, but this is perhaps the most appealing one.
Ethereum blockchain is also used to make other tokens, which are collectively called ERC20 tokens and are all based on the same blockchain so it’s easy to transfer them from one to the other. The network is highly collaborative and used for various purposes.
Ripple on the other hand is a single company that originally came up with XRP tokens meant for facilitating distant financial transactions and lowering their respective fees. The code was eventually made open source, but the fact that it came from a single company which still owns over 60% of all tokens doesn’t resonate with all the blockchain enthusiasts.
However, there are a few reasons for the success that XRP has seen. As mentioned previously, it is primarily used by banks and businesses looking to exchange money without much too long wait times and accompanied steep fees.
Having said all that, these are two pretty different assets that appeal to different audiences, which is why we’re probably see them take significantly different routes.
However, the general consensus is that both have very valuable features which is why many people invest in both. It’s also very easy to exchange the two. You can compare rates on different exchanges for this transaction