Comment by malloryerik

To me this is almost like a tone-deaf naming change.

Empty Slot (new Pro as Mythos competitor?)

Old Pro -> now Flash

Old Flash -> now Flash Lite

Old Flash Lite -> now Gemma (and not served by Google)

I say "almost" because the situation is more fluid and unstable than a normal naming change. If Apple were to do this with laptops, maybe it'd be like, Air gets better and pricier and becomes Pro-level model, Neo same way becomes Air-level model, etc. But Apple's too design oriented to do something like that. Google, well...

This change has made me decide to move to a multi-provider situation like through OpenRouter for consumer-facing LLM api in a service I'm building. I just can't trust Google to not constantly rearrange everything under our feet. Doesn't mean I won't use Gemini, but it clearly means I need to have others in the mix ready to go. In fact I used to use lots of Flash Lite, which is now Gemma territory, and I can't get that served by Google anymore and don't want to run my own hardware.

But in any case, I'd compare this "Flash" model with previous "Pro" on all metrics. It's kinda like if in clothes a Small suddenly became what was a Large, or at Starbucks a Grande became the new de facto Venti. And only for the new! drinks.

And if we think this way, it's possible that prices are actually falling?