Comment by mindcrime

So much this. The entire experience around using Google's AI API's is a complete shit-show. I was (stubborn|obstinate|stupid|whatever) enough to keep dicking around until I actually got some stuff working (a few weeks ago) but I still feel dirty from the whole process. And I still don't know what I'm using (Gemini? AI Studio? Vertex? GCP? Other??) or how all of this crap relates.

And FSM forbid I have another time when my debit card number gets compromised and I have to try changing it with Google. That was even MORE painful than just trying to get things working in the first place. WTF am I editing, my GCP account or my Google account? Are those two different things? Yes? No? Sort of? But they're connected, somehow... right? I mean, I disable my card in one place, but find that billing is still trying to go to it anyway. And then I find another place on another Google page that mentions that card, but when I try to disable it I get some opaque error about "can't disable card because card is already in use. Disable card first" or whatever.

I can't even... I mean, shit. It's hard to imagine creating an experience that is that bad even if you were trying to do so.

Let me just say, I won't be recommending Google's AI API's, or GCP, or Vertex, or any of this stuff to anybody, anytime soon. I don't care how good their models are.

At least chatting with Gemini at gemini.google.com works. So far that's about the only thing AI related from Google I've seen that doesn't seem like a complete cluster-f%@k.