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.
Eric Schmidt even predicted the issue in How Google Works, there are "whales" who have no business staying in their role but have become so senior that they basically control entire small towns worth of people.
Off the top of my head: workaday
Which are amazing! Argon’s insights on code review and copywriting are phenomenal, and make these hoops well worth it! But geez, it’s horrifying that we had to figure this out!
Argon also tends to write particularly warm copy and external messages - unsurprising with Google's particular access to email data and caches of writing from the early internet.
We haven't really used it to write code from scratch - generally, we're wary of these exact things, and feel like Claude continues to have good enough architectural instincts that we've doubled down into the Claude ecosystem, with mods and tooling (including this multi-agent reviewer) that accelerate our workflows.
Eventually I gave up. Anthropic/OpenAI took < 10 minutes to get things going.
Enabling the same service via Apple Developers meanwhile took me minutes and I never felt lost, confused or frustrated.
Please, Google, just pick a random dev off the street and ask them to do something (that should be) simple on GCloud, then on e.g. Cloudflare. Analyse why they took longer (and cursed more) in GCloud and fix that. The fact that (despite Cloudflare having awful docs as well) my first ever Workers deploy including third-party DNS setup and R2 took less time then getting an API key from GCloud says something
Their backend looks very confused too. I consume their models through OpenRouter and requests are processed randomly by AI Studio or Vertex. API key management had several entry points for a while too, with the option to query the same model with a GCP, Firebase and/or AI Studio API key.
you could pin the provider to always get one or the other
When I signed a few devs at work up for Gemini for Code I had to go into Google Cloud, jump through several different screens, assign special permissions to each dev to make it work and even when it did work...it was insanely confusing compared to every other option out there.
It's to the point where I'm better off asking Grok Bot set it up for me rather than ever deal with figuring it out again.
https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2083596911060324570?a=iif1W7...
Is this true anymore? I feel like a lot of the best talent have better opportunities elsewhere where they won't get bogged down by entrenched bureaucracy. Not to mention the Google interview process and physical locations filter out a lot of talented people from even wanting to apply.
This could be used as a preface for so many things.
Do they still have 5 messaging apps or did they finally trim it down.
It's been a baffling question for over a decade (or more)
Right. They lack no resources. Therefore, what is happening must be what they want to happen.
Vertex AI existed as an ML platform before the GenAI era. DeepMind was doing it's thing in another silo. Then Gemini products came along. Then they acquired the Windsurf folks.
A smaller company would have no choice but to focus on one team and one product. Google has a Darwinian ecosystem and someone has to come along and smash teams together, clumsily refactoring the technology and user journeys.
Their employees read HN though and their VPs hear customers complain about onboarding. I hear there is an effort underway to create one unified agentic platform.
Eng was neutered at that large org. Product people had the "vision" and the say. A lot of product people just used our team's product as a stepping stone onto their next role and in the end it showed. I would hope Google has a better culture...but theres a good chance it doesn't.
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:
(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).
It's been maybe 6 months since I last tried them in any proper fashion (other than my usual benchmark which is non-coding related), but I was so let down previously, and found it so exhausting to just figure out how to get a subscription working with them, that I really feel like I've given up.
I'm sure I'll get around to trying them. Heck, it could happen today if the mood hits, but....it does need a specific mood. The mood to get over bullshit UX and a profound disdain for the company.
YMMV
That view somewhat biased by Flash getting stuck looping in Antigravity's CLI when I asked if it could add plan usage % to the status line. Instead of "no", it first pretended agy was Claude Code and gave me a wrong answer, then resorted to trying to analyse the binary.
Their harness situation is just awful.
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.
But at least the limits in the full plan are about the same as astra limits on the $20 oai plan.
Would want assurances they won’t permaban a Gmail for a false positive for something on their LLM offering. Like the risk with Google Photos (thinking about the dad sending a doctor a photo of his son’s rash).
Have used them both for work with google workspace accts, and personally, with antigravity in linux.
By all rights, people should be debating among Codex, Claude, and Gemini plans. They obv don't care about that mindshare but they're a big enough organization that they could carve off a marketing and dev outreach team.
On X the only Google person I follow is Richard Seroter, and he hypes Antigravity sometimes, but not the plans you need for it. No one ever talks about it.
They should be the 3rd or 4th, certainly jockeying for position with Grok/Cursor. I would never sign up for an Elon AI plan under any circumstances, and there's enough distaste for Anthropic and OpenAI to fuel a few DCs, and Google isn't even playing.
Perfect Venn Diagram.
Thanks for the links. I'm pretty sure last time I tried this I got mysterious errors and a couple of redirect loops. Maybe this time will be the one that works.
This narrative seems astroturfed particularly hard on this website. Like Google's AI isnt allowed to be praised on HN.
3.8 flash and argon have been great FYI. Can't tell a difference between any of the claude models I use at work, minus actually being able to read what it writes.
Maybe it's a b2b vs b2c thing.
So, no, it is not astroturfing.
Gemini AI Plus does exist:
"How do I even pay for it?" is particularly baffling to me considering it's literally just included in their normal range of Google One subscriptions that bundle Drive/etc which have been around for years.
You pick a plan and pay for it, and sign in to whichever app you're using like Gemini chat (ChatGPT/Claude Chat) or Antigravity (Codex/Claude Code).
AI Studio is the developer console (OpenAI Platform/Claude Platform). Vertex AI is the Google Cloud enterprise platform (using GPT or Claude models via AWS Bedrock/Azure AI Foundry).
Pretty much every product is a 1:1 equivalent with the same offering from OpenAI/Anthropic + Azure/AWS. Google is both a hyperscaler and an AI lab, so the venn diagram includes both the direct OpenAI/Anthropic products and what they also serve for enterprises via Azure/AWS.
I get that Google does bad stuff and isn't popular on HN which is understandable, but the specific criticisms really don't make sense. The entire AI developer/consumer space is messy and confusing but that's an industry wide complaint not specific to Google unless they should just not compete on certain verticals.
I can’t purchase any Google consumer products now, because this “family” account is now an “enterprise” and… there’s just no way. It can’t be done. No. Just… go away. Shoo…
I can’t get a YouTube “family” account.
I can’t get an Antigravity personal account.
Nothing works.
Google insists that I upgrade the entire organisation, or nothing. I can’t get an AI plan for just one “employee”!
It’s doubly stupid because like millions of people, I initially subscribed as a non-business and was forced to convert by Google!
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?
It's possible Argon/Carbon are pro sized, but given the internal rumblings and that it is based on a fresh pretrain, it makes most sense for it to be a "big" model.
Google did at one point have an "Ultra" sized model, but nothing more came of it after 1.5 Ultra.
Where are you finding ways to try e.g. Opus without paying for it?
> I literally don't care about their models anymore because I can't even try them without paying for them?
Where does Anthropic offer Opus 5.5 for free for everyone? Or OpenAI GPT-6 Astra?
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://vercel.com/ai-gateway/models/gemini-omni-1.2-flash
If you're using any sort of router middle-man new models are usually easy to try.
Not only is it easy to pay but I also don’t risk getting my account banned.
The real problem is you can't even try them with paying for them! It's been more than a week since their previous model was announced, "Gemini 4 Carbon", if there is such a thing. Even paying customers still can't use it!
Aside from winning the Nobel prize in chemistry.
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.
DuckDuckGo’s equivalent feature is unfortunately too prone to hallucination, especially whatever cheap model they are using for AI summaries. Once you click in it switches to GPT Luna, which will sometimes hilariously correct the previous response.