Comment by damsta
3 days ago
> 3.7 Flash is available through the end of the year at an introductory price of $0.75/1M input tokens and $3.75/1M output tokens.
> Introductory pricing expires on December 31, 2026. Starting January 1, 2027, $1.50/1M input tokens and $7.50/1M output tokens will apply.
Clearly this model will be irrelevant by Jan. 2027, why would Google even bother to say this?
It's basically a "if we really have to support this for a long time, we want to be compensated for that" pricing strategy. It's about long term maintenance cost being greater _because_ it will be irrelevant.
Its probably just a corporate symptom, weird stuff like this happens in messy large orgs.
Maybe they know something we don't. What if all frontier lab do this? Maybe this is actual cost of running these llm.
They want to maintain the perception that Flash is worth $7.5/mot, so they can charge more for the next one.