Comment by oger
2 days ago
While I see the point of limited capacity, it also shows that Google did not plan for rate limiting / throttling of high usage customers. This is ALWAYS the problem with flatrate pricing models. 2% of your customers burn 80+% of your capacity. Did see that in former times with DSL, not too long ago with mobile and now with AI subscriptions. If you want to provide a "good" service for all customers better implement (and not only write in your T&Cs) a fair usage model which (fairly) penalises heavy users.
Good on them that they want to provide a way to bring back customers on board that were burned / surprised by their move.
BUT: The industry is missing a significant long term revenue opportunity here. There obviously is latent demand and Claws have a great product market fit. Why on earth would you deactivate customers that show high usage? Inform them that you have another product (API keys) for them and maybe threaten with throttling. But don't throw them overboard! Find a solution that makes commercial sense for both sides (security from API bill shock for the customer / predictable token usage for the provider).
What we're seeing right now is the complete opposite. Ban customers that might even rely on their account. Feels like the accountants have won this round - but did not expect the PR backlash and possible Streisand effect...
Yeah this is a massive fuckup on Google's part and they are taking it out on their customers as per usual.
It's not hard to define a quota system and enforce it. If the quota is too high then reduce the quota. If people are abusing the quota with automated requests then detect that and rate limit those users.
If I'm paying $200+ a month I should be able to saturate Google with requests. It's up to Google to enforce their policies via backpressure so that they don't get overloaded.
Then again this is the same company that suspended people's gmail because they sent too many emotes in YouTube chat. Sadge.
> If I'm paying $200+ a month I should be able to saturate Google with requests
Says who? You?
The customer? Who always wants a lower price?
I specifically said that they don't have to fulfil the requests, just that they should be able to accept the requests. Throttling and rate limiting are valid ways to respond to having too many requests. Banning your paying customers' accounts because they sent too many requests is an insane way to deal with having too many requests.
Most companies want to make money. They would use this opportunity to upsell these high value customers to a more expensive plan with higher limits.
Google, which has some kind of dutch disease from making too much easy money from advertising, sees people trying to give them large amounts of money and thinks "How dare they attempt to buy our services? They're getting banned!"
> Google did not plan for rate limiting / throttling of high usage customers
Antigravity has very low daily and weekly quotas unless you pay for their most expensive plan, so it means these people drop $200+ a month to run these bots, insanity
> so it means these people drop $200+ a month to run these bots
It doesn't mean that it's the only thing they're doing, could be they have the plan for other purposes, and also use it for that.
> Good on them that they want to provide a way to bring back customers on board that were burned / surprised by their move.
Are they though? Another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47116205) seems to indicate these people are all indefinitely suspended with no path to unsuspend them:
> [...] I must be transparent and inform you that, in accordance with Google’s policy, this situation falls under a zero tolerance policy, and we are unable to reverse the suspension. [...]
> it also shows that Google did not plan for rate limiting / throttling of high usage customers.
There is a (pretty generous and imo reasonable) request quota that reset every 24h
There is consensus on r/gemini that the window is a matter of hours now, not 24h.
I subscribe to the AI Pro plan. I knew of a published limit of 100 Pro prompts per day, but before this month it seemed they were relaxed about it. I have now started to be rate limited on Pro when nowhere near that quota, due to too many prompts within a short time window (probably due to short prompts and not aggregating my questions). So now I use the Thinking (basically Flash) model and bump up to Pro for certain queries only.
There will always be a minority who spoil it for the majority.
I don't know why you rely on some Reddit consensus when you can just open Gemini CLI and enter /stats to get the confirmation that you get 200 Pro requests per 24h, and the counter starts when you do your first request.
Unless there is something I'm missing
2 replies →
A fair usage model isn't some handwavey bullshit throttled quota buried in the ToS and marketed as "Unlimited." Its applying a realistic usage quota equally to everybody in the same payment tier that is spelled out right up front so that people know exactly what to expect.
The whole concept of service "abusers" is made up bullshit by companies that over promise, over sell and under deliver.