It's insane how Google has dropped the ball almost completely with AI.
I literally don't care about their models anymore because I can't even try them without paying for them?
I already pay for the plus plan but whatever their latest model was, is locked for me. Or otherwise it's just not accessible for me.
If I try to add balance to my Google payment account, it shows me errors and is asking me to verify my identity through government documents.
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Not to mention the extremely confusing terminology. "Flash", "Experimental". Why are most of your models either of those two? I don't get the confidence that your models are any good because of such names. Give me a normal reliable model!
Even if Google releases AGI tier models in the future, I'll always look for other models because Google clearly thinks their models are too good for any of us.
AI Studio is legitimately the worst UX experience on the internet. For a company with unlimited cash and the ability to hire the best talent, I just don’t get it. Give nearly anyone else a few hours alone with that codebase and Opus-5.5 and it will be looking 1,000x better.
> "AI Studio is legitimately the worst UX experience on the internet."
I find it hard to believe there aren't worse ones out there. But off the top of my head I actually can't think of any...
Quite incredible that you can say a sentence like that, while talking about something within Google(/Alphabet) that's actually an important area for them (not just some random little side project), and yet it isn't hyperbolic, it's sincere!
Everyone there overseeing it (from direct management all the way up to C-suite) should truly feel embarrassed.
I wanted to pay them money to try their things. I just literally couldn't figure out how to do it. I think I then managed to get some trial credits but I never managed to activate anything with them and hit API limit after basically one prompt.
Google has an near monopoly on Internet ads (or rather a duo-poly combined with Facebook). Having such an monopoly makes them have hindsights on what they are doing and how they are failing, or even if they do, the incentives and management just aren't cleanly aligned with what ought to be the case.
There have been months where we've paid 1500€ for my AI models, but I can't bother with Google's models because I literally don't know how to get them. Every time I look it up it looks incredibly cumbersome and confusing. It's not clear which models I get, if I can get them on my personal accounts or need the work account. It's just too confusing.
I am a Google Workspace customer by the way (have multiple accounts, actually!).
Google must really not care about me as a customer, and instead only care about the enterprise.
I'm quite happy using antigravity fwiw. I use Claude code for work. Only tried agy because I was already paying for Google one (youtube music, youtube without ads/premium and a few TB of storage).
Antigravity come with Google's models and anthropic - so Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Opus 5.5
Claude Sonnet 5.5 and
GPT-OSS 120B.
Agy is better than Claude code in some ways and vice versa.
Google models are great.
Ironically google music is so terrible I've uninstalled it and use Metrolist exclusively.
I think google models do a decent job helping me put together a blog, for example:
The only sane way is to do it through openrouter. I spent hours trying to figure out how to use one of their two competing APIs that expose the models natively, it ended up being a waste of time.
Yes, I do that to do quick tests of the model, but I am looking for the subsidized monthly subscription, which everyone else has. I won't use it otherwise.
For unknown reasons workspace accounts get ridiculously slow roll outs of new models.
The only way to get the latest models with decent limits on a subsidized plan is to pay the full cost (monthly or yearly) for the pro plan or higher on a personal account.
Promo "pro" accounts and discounted "pro" accounts get much worse limits and model selection.
It's confusing for enterprises, too. Believe it or not, the cloud sales team recommends hiring partners to set up basic auth and "landing zones" for the APIs.
This sentiment is the top comment I'm seeing on every recent Google release. That it's impossible to actually access the tech, or even pay for it.
I heard someone say on the last such thread that you can use their models thru OpenRouter, and that this is much more pleasant than trying to use them thru Google directly. Looks like it's up there already:
These are the (approximately) equivalent model classes between the labs
Experimental means not production, so liable to change in the near future if you decide to build on it.
Omni is a video editing model, and flash implies it's a lighter weight one than what they have/could have. The other labs don't have competing models here.
What's Carbon then? I haven't been paying much attention to Google but their naming has been confusing me.
Luna/Terra/Sol/Astra was a bit pretentious but at least the sizing makes sense. (I imagined the meeting... "Ok guys, we're getting mogged on naming... what's more epic than a Myth?" -"The SUN!")
Anthropic makes sense with the literary "scale" naming, mostly.
Is a Carbon bigger than an Argon though? Maybe it has to do with the atomic number?
They may have dropped the ball on AI-for-programmers, but the Google slopbot is the one the normies use. As much as their AI summaries used to be the biggest joke in the industry, today they're the one I think normies who aren't "AI people" are using the most day-to-day. I see a lot of people doing it:
Search with Google, see the AI summary and the search results, realise they want more detailed info, and put that request for clarification into the AI reply and now they're off to the races on a Google AI conversation.
Now, it's questionable how "sticky" that is and latest financials revealed it was extremely unprofitable, but in terms of raw "who's using AI" it seems to be working for them.
It truly is. I acutallu signed up for an annual plan because I used the image models for design ideas on my house. Few weeks ago they announced changes, no more pro models. It’s laughable how much they keep screwing up.
The rollout is so confusing. Going straight to the Gemini app and asking when I can use this model gets me vague and contradicting answers. Ultimately it sounds like the Vids rollout will take 1-3 days, and you can go to vids.new on desktop to see if you’ve won the lottery and have it available now, apparently on any free Google account. Business accounts can use it too. Meanwhile the Gemini app is getting it on paid plans, but with different video length limits and no clear rollout timeline. If you pay for the API, it’s available now apparently.
I think they are doing a terrible job with their product packaging. Like others, I also gave up with Google models long ago due to difficulty in accessing and low limits.
My gut is that this is reflective of their fragmented internal product organization around AI.
Completely random, but I was inspecting the source code for their Omni 1.2 Flash web page, and there are insane amount of newlines. There are seven newlines between the first line and the DOCTYPE. There are huge amount of newlines between each section. What did they use to generate this website?
they might have a composer layer which loads certain components (transparent to you) with and without authentication and mixing different backend sources.
Then they might have templating engines and frameworks.
Sometimes they just don't care but lets be honest: a few new lines are a few bytes.
But the most critical pages go through optimizers for traffic
> Today, we’re rolling out Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash, and making it generally available across the Gemini API and Gemini for business. Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash introduces native 15-second video creation, multi-turn conversational editing capabilities, and enhanced reference following. We have dropped the price 30% from Gemini Omni 1.1 making it available at $0.07 per second for 720p video.
When playback ends on one of the videos, the page jumps back to that video for some reason. I saw this too when I had multiple videos playing at once and the earlier clip on the page finished while watching another one lower on the page.
Not going to even read this post. While I have been really bullish on Google I am now tired of them constantly baiting us with vaporware announcements unfortunately.
That is sad... I tried to guess and ignore AI videos (created to be deliberately misleading as "realistic") by length, but I guess that time is over now.
It would be incredibly helpful to me if AI model names followed cars.
I'm not scratching my head about a "2025 Corolla." Windows 95 and 2000 had this built in, but then they lost it.
I'd prefer it was called Omni 2026.2 instead. It embeds a date and model and would package it as a product for on-premise or local hosting. It'd be easier to sell to the bean counters in the future: "We're running Omni 2026.2, we want to upgrade to Omni 2028."
But it still starts with “Gemini”. It would be better if they called it Gemini Omni 4, 4.1 etc. Otherwise call it just Omni 1.2 and drop the Gemini prefix.
TFA is literally a marketing piece for why someone might want to use it. If you personally don't need it, that's ok, you're just not their target audience.
Hot take, Google should focus on their open weight models. I use Qwen 3.8 and it’s been amazing. I would pay for Max but there’s no provider or server here in the states. If they had an amazing Gemma 5, I would seriously consider trying their closed source models. Model comfort and familiarity is a real thing.
it’s a shame that Google/Gemini decided to restrict and fuck other adventurous yet extremely gracious paying customers; who were excited at the prospect of not being locked in to two obnoxious companies.
oh well, I guess we’ll just have to take that enthusiasm and roll it over to all the open weights on providers like fireworks.ai. or others.
i’m so happy I got in early and paid for $200 a month for shit ass Opus 4.6 and sonnet 4.6 and being locked into the absolutely limited Gemini 3.8 flash.
I literally don't care about their models anymore because I can't even try them without paying for them?
I already pay for the plus plan but whatever their latest model was, is locked for me. Or otherwise it's just not accessible for me.
If I try to add balance to my Google payment account, it shows me errors and is asking me to verify my identity through government documents.
---
Not to mention the extremely confusing terminology. "Flash", "Experimental". Why are most of your models either of those two? I don't get the confidence that your models are any good because of such names. Give me a normal reliable model!
Even if Google releases AGI tier models in the future, I'll always look for other models because Google clearly thinks their models are too good for any of us.
I find it hard to believe there aren't worse ones out there. But off the top of my head I actually can't think of any...
Quite incredible that you can say a sentence like that, while talking about something within Google(/Alphabet) that's actually an important area for them (not just some random little side project), and yet it isn't hyperbolic, it's sincere!
Everyone there overseeing it (from direct management all the way up to C-suite) should truly feel embarrassed.
I am a Google Workspace customer by the way (have multiple accounts, actually!).
Google must really not care about me as a customer, and instead only care about the enterprise.
Antigravity come with Google's models and anthropic - so Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Opus 5.5 Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-OSS 120B.
Agy is better than Claude code in some ways and vice versa.
Google models are great.
Ironically google music is so terrible I've uninstalled it and use Metrolist exclusively.
I think google models do a decent job helping me put together a blog, for example:
https://hypertekst.net
(Content is typical 90s homepage stuff, not great. But model voice isn't as grating as Claude - and while it has a "look" I think it's s bit better).
The only way to get the latest models with decent limits on a subsidized plan is to pay the full cost (monthly or yearly) for the pro plan or higher on a personal account.
Promo "pro" accounts and discounted "pro" accounts get much worse limits and model selection.
Have used them both for work with google workspace accts, and personally, with antigravity in linux.
I heard someone say on the last such thread that you can use their models thru OpenRouter, and that this is much more pleasant than trying to use them thru Google directly. Looks like it's up there already:
https://openrouter.ai/google/gemini-omni-1.2-flash
Where are you finding ways to try e.g. Opus without paying for it?
Flash sonnet tera
Pro Opus Sol
Argon Fable Astra
These are the (approximately) equivalent model classes between the labs
Experimental means not production, so liable to change in the near future if you decide to build on it.
Omni is a video editing model, and flash implies it's a lighter weight one than what they have/could have. The other labs don't have competing models here.
Luna/Terra/Sol/Astra was a bit pretentious but at least the sizing makes sense. (I imagined the meeting... "Ok guys, we're getting mogged on naming... what's more epic than a Myth?" -"The SUN!")
Anthropic makes sense with the literary "scale" naming, mostly.
Is a Carbon bigger than an Argon though? Maybe it has to do with the atomic number?
Search with Google, see the AI summary and the search results, realise they want more detailed info, and put that request for clarification into the AI reply and now they're off to the races on a Google AI conversation.
Now, it's questionable how "sticky" that is and latest financials revealed it was extremely unprofitable, but in terms of raw "who's using AI" it seems to be working for them.
Why is this so difficult to figure out?
I think they are doing a terrible job with their product packaging. Like others, I also gave up with Google models long ago due to difficulty in accessing and low limits.
My gut is that this is reflective of their fragmented internal product organization around AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_langua...
they might have a composer layer which loads certain components (transparent to you) with and without authentication and mixing different backend sources.
Then they might have templating engines and frameworks.
Sometimes they just don't care but lets be honest: a few new lines are a few bytes.
But the most critical pages go through optimizers for traffic
> https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/med...
Text from the first paragraph on the page says
> Today, we’re rolling out Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash, and making it generally available across the Gemini API and Gemini for business. Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash introduces native 15-second video creation, multi-turn conversational editing capabilities, and enhanced reference following. We have dropped the price 30% from Gemini Omni 1.1 making it available at $0.07 per second for 720p video.
Focus on this part
> We have dropped the price 30%
The text to speech audio says
> We have dropped the price 3%
Google's main source of revenue is advertising (yes, still).
This is one of paths that serve that.
Still confused? Look at what Meta is doing with end-to-end ad creation.
I'm not saying Omni makes good ads. It's all part of the toolbox.
What a great way to start.
I'm not scratching my head about a "2025 Corolla." Windows 95 and 2000 had this built in, but then they lost it.
I'd prefer it was called Omni 2026.2 instead. It embeds a date and model and would package it as a product for on-premise or local hosting. It'd be easier to sell to the bean counters in the future: "We're running Omni 2026.2, we want to upgrade to Omni 2028."
oh well, I guess we’ll just have to take that enthusiasm and roll it over to all the open weights on providers like fireworks.ai. or others.
i’m so happy I got in early and paid for $200 a month for shit ass Opus 4.6 and sonnet 4.6 and being locked into the absolutely limited Gemini 3.8 flash.
Is being locked in to three obnoxious companies that much better?