Thanks any Googlers who had a hand in this
So this is an actual change of pace
Alibaba is forced to do this stuff: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/al...
Meanwhile Deepseek: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45643163#45652636
Carbon is the next version of Argon. But Hydrogen is supposed to coexist with Carbon. Also no idea where the scheme is coming from, what elements should we expect.
Wild guess: maybe they are going with how abundant the elements are to scale the models. I'm no chemist so I don't know reliably how the relative abundance of Argon and Carbon works out, but Hydrogen is "well-known" as the most abundant element in the universe, so maybe that's why its the base model. But, this is essentially a trend of one, so not a trend at all, unless someone can verify it still works for Argon and Carbon.
Intuitively, Argon is 4 Pro, Carbon is 4.1 Pro, and Hydrogen is 4.1 Flash (slightly better than Argon according to benchmarks).
The sol/terra/astra, haiku/sonnet/opus clicked without needing to be explained
A fable is a tame mythos.
The problem with using elements names simultaneously as both version numbers and product tiers, is that inevitably you will face a confusing collision or you will exhaust the space.
My only real complaint with Google is they regularly change names for seemingly no reason. I'm still out here saying "Gemini" when I type "agy" and I don't bother saying "Anti gravity" because I assume that name won't exist in a year or two.
I think OpenAI's names are clearest. In most people's understanding, moon < Earth < sun < stars.
• Cupcake (Android 1.5)
• Donut (Android 1.6)
• Eclair (Android 2.0–2.1)
• Froyo (Android 2.2)
• Gingerbread (Android 2.3)
• Honeycomb (Android 3.0–3.2)
• Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)
• Jelly Bean (Android 4.1–4.3)
• KitKat (Android 4.4)
• Lollipop (Android 5.0–5.1)
• Marshmallow (Android 6.0)
• Nougat (Android 7.0–7.1)
• Oreo (Android 8.0–8.1)
• Pie (Android 9)
Using constantly changing names for tiers is a bad idea. Unless the tiers are pre-existing (bronze, silver, gold).
Fables are short.
They should have used "saga" / "epic" / "cycle" / "series" / "universe".
They botched it.
A haiku is a short poem. A sonnet is a longer work. An opus is a great work. Mythos is a connected body of works.
As with Open AI, Luna --> Terra --> Sol --> Astra from smallest to largest. Very straightforward.
With Google it's totally incoherent. Hydrogen --> Argon --> Carbon!?
Hydrogen is small, but it's the most abundant element in the universe by far. Argon is >3x larger than carbon by molecular mass, though carbon is more abundant. It's impossible to determine what's supposed to be smaller and what's supposed to be larger.
If Google was going to go with elements, it should have been an absolute no-brainer to link size of of the element to the size of the model eg. Hydrogen/carbon/argon, but no, Google screws up the naming like they _always_ do. Hell, use the noble gases for christ sake. Helium/neon/argon/krypton/xeon would have been great, not perfect mind you, because a lot of people might not remember the ordering of those elements, but at least it would be consistent and make sense.
Letters of the alphabet: Also makes no sense. There was a theory that Argon = A, that there was an unreleased B model (Bismuth or Barium or something), Carbon = C, etc. (Similar to Intel's MMORPG-inspired Alchemist --> Battlemage --> Celestial...) Hydrogen broke this notion.
It's just completely incoherent.
Also, the biggest being Astra is a bit confusing. Sol is also a star.
Furthermore, unless you know they’re supposed to be ordered by size you can’t know which is best.
I don't think these are as difficult as you're making them sound? I think the majority of people who will care what model they're using will know "lunar", "terrestrial", "solar", "astronomy" etc?
Ar - C - H - ?
Hydrogen: this thing floats. Density less than air.
Argon: does not float. Density more than air.
Carbon: this thing is a solid, whichever allotrope you pick. It’s solidly heavier.
See, so easy! /s
Google's is just random.
Fable is essentially Mythos but with guard rails added.
Small/medium/large/etc. has the most easily deducible ordering, but it's not great from a marketing perspective and also has headroom issues unless you're ok with names like gpt-8-xxxxl.
OpenAI's naming is probably the best. The ordering is easily deducible and there's plenty of headroom in both directions. Tons of cool sci-fi sounding names still on the table, and it also comes with the implication that they're approaching a singularity.
I don't know what Google is doing. It's kind of impressive to have an inconsistent ordering after only three names.
Google, though, really has broken new ground in incoherence. WTF.
It doesn't do anything! It's inert!
Which will be launched after GPT 7 Uranus.
Earlier today I found myself asking ChatGPT to research and explain exactly what Anthropic Playground is for and how specifically it may differ for my tasks from Anthropic Workspace, Chat, Code, and API credits. I chose ChatGPT Sol 6.1 high for this task going on gut feel, hoping it was the best model to handle that job without wasting my precious Claude tokens.
Carbon (6) > Hydrogen (1) > Argon (18).
Double nonsense because it appears Hydrogen is in fact a smaller model than Argon, in which case this should obviously be released as "Gemini 4.1 Hydrogen" or something.
What they probably should've done if they really wanted to use elements is to do noble gases, and start these first three models in the middle (to leave room for bigger/smaller models in the future).
So you'd have:
Argon => Argon (18)
Hydrogen => Krypton (36)
Carbon => Xenon (54)
Not exactly because as noted it appears hydrogen is in fact the smaller model, but then this should be (again) 4.1 or something.
And they'd leave space for a truly massive model if needed (Radon) and two slots for much smaller models, with Helium (2) presumably being a model that could be run on basically any consumer device.
No matter what you do you can't go wrong if you spin it right!
"Claude and Codex have cool names, they are more successful than us, so therefore if we give gemini cool names we'll be successful too"
-marketing drone, probably