Agreed. I really wish Google would get their act together because I think they have the potential of being faster, cheaper with bigger context windows. They're so great at hardcore science and engineering, but they absolutely suck at products.
Agreed. I really wish Google would get their act together because I think they have the potential of being faster, cheaper with bigger context windows. They're so great at hardcore science and engineering, but they absolutely suck at products.
Google can do anything but get their act together.
I think this is being downvoted coz it doesn't seem to be really responding to the thread, and maybe it isn't, but for anyone who hasn't tried Gemini CLI:
My experience after a month or so of heavy use is exactly this. The AI is rock solid. I'm pretty consistently impressed with its ability to derive insights from the code, when it works. But the client is flaky, the backend is flaky, and the overall experience for me is always "I wish I could just use Claude".
Say 1 in 10 queries craps out (often the client OOMs even though I have 192Gb of RAM). Sounds like a 10% reliability issue but actually it just pushes me into "fuck this I'll just do it myself" so it knocks out like 50% of the value of the product.
(Still, I wouldn't be surprised if this can be fixed over the next few months, it could easily be very competitive IMO).
I have been heavily using the Gemini API via Aider for a few months and it has been absolutely stable. Claude, in comparison, has been much flakier. OpenAI somewhere in between.
It's definitely possible there's a "grass is always greener" effect going on here, to be fair.
None of these tools give the impression of being well-tested software. My guess is that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic actually has the necessary density in expertise to build quality software. Google obviously can build good software _when it really wants to_ but in this space its strategy looks like "build the products the other guys are building, cut whatever corners necessary to do this absolutely as fast as possible".
So even if my initial impressions are more accurate it's quite possible Google wins long term here.
Semi-related but I have the same experience with the gemini mobile app on android. ChatGPT and Claude are both great user experiences and the best word to describe how the gemini app feels is flaky.
Just adding my two cents after test driving Gemini Ultra after being a long time ChatGPT Pro subscriber:
Remember the whole “Taken 3 makes Taken 2 look like Taken 1” meme? Well Google’s latest video generating AI makes any video gen AI I’ve seen up until now look like Taken 3* (sigh, I said 1, ruined it) - and they are seriously impressive on their own.
Edit: By “they” I mean the other video generating AI makes models, not the other Taken movies. I hope Liam Neeson doesn't read HN, because a delivery like that might not make him laugh.
I really do not want Google to win anything. They're a giant monopoly across multiple industries. We need a greater balance of power.
Antitrust enforcement has been letting us down for over two decades. If we don't have an oxygenation event, we'll go an entire generation where we only reward tax-collecting, non-innovation capital. That's unhealthy and unfair.
Our career sector has been institutionalized and rewards the 0.001% even as they rest on their laurels and conspire to suppress wages and innovation. There's a reason why centicorns petered out and why the F500 is tech-heavy. It's because big tech is a dragnet that consumes everything it touches - film studios, grocery stores, and God only knows what else it'll assimilate in the unending search for unregulated, cancerous growth.
FAANG's $500k TC is at the expense of hundreds of unicorns making their ICs even wealthier. That money mostly winds up going to institutional investors, where the money sits parked instead of flowing into huge stakes risks and cutthroat competition. That's why a16z and YC want to see increased antitrust regulations.
But it's really bad for consumers too. It's why our smartphones are stagnant taxation banana republics with one of two landlords. Nothing new, yet as tightly controlled an authoritarian state. New ideas can't be tried and can't attain healthy margins.
It's wild that you can own a trademark, but the only way for a consumer to access it is to use a Google browser that defaults to Google search (URLs are scary), where the search results will be gamed by competitors. You can't even own your own brand anymore.
Winning shouldn't be easy. It should be hard. A neverending struggle that rewards consumers.
We need a forest fire to renew the ecosystem.
Google supposedly claimed to have no moat, but they actually have
- all the users
- all the apps (Google, GMail, YouTube, Docs, Maps...)
- all the books (Google Books)
- all the video (YouTube)
- all the web pages
- custom hardware
It's honestly weird they aren't doing better. Agree that the models are great and the UX is bad all around.
Hey now, let's not forget it. They also have:
- all the lobbyists - all the money
Google has been, for at least a decade, making pretty terrible choices that squander developer and power-user goodwill (see: any thread where they announce a new product and one of the top comments will link to killedbygoogle). When you've burnt bridges with your biggest evangelists, adoption by normies slows, and your products appear to stagnate.
Unfortunately, they've been insulated from the consequences of their bad decisions by the fact the money printer (ads) keeps their company afloat and mollifies shareholders. The moment that dries up, they're in trouble.
We say this (I admit I would say the same as you), and yet their revenue is $400 billion a year.
I don't think they care what we think. They're thriving despite our protests.
But yeah, they shouldn't be shielded from antitrust. They have literally everything.