Comment by spyspy
1 day ago
People really seem to struggle with this and I can't figure out why... Like it kind of just reads like astroturfing in every thread. I downloaded agy, purchased a subscription that the splash page said "includes Argon" and it... works?
3.8 flash and argon have been great FYI. Can't tell a difference between any of the claude models I use at work, minus actually being able to read what it writes.
They (Google) didn't accept my CC. AWS does, Claude does, OpenAI does. Meta/Muse didn't. Kimi did.
So, not that easy for me (I should note im not in the USA)
Googler, opinions are my own. I work on payments.
Have you tried contacting payments or the related product support to ask? https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/?hl=en#topic=90175...
We do a lot to make sure credit cards work all around the world (like we kept supporting cards in India when Apple pulled out due to certain regulations). There could be some issue with your account or card. I could maybe look if you contacted me, but likely I couldn't reply at all.
People don't care enough to leave feedback or ask support after crappy experiences. Especially if the feedback page is hidden deep into some portal. And ad-hoc fixes for single individuals also matter little for the larger scheme of things. Most people just move on to other products that actually take their money.
Sorry to be so whiney, and I'm sure your powers over this are very limited, but google payment messes are widely known and documented and rampant, and apparently with no improvement in sight. Google is really leaving money on the table for not being more proactive with fixing these.
Yeah, had the same problem. Just adding the _same_ credit card again worked, though.
It honestly does feel like astroturfing. I use Gemini models across a range of client and personal projects, in AI Studio and GCP and they just work.
Maybe it's a b2b vs b2c thing.
I can tell you that I have a Gemini plus subscription I still don't have anything more recent than 3.6 Flash. In consequence, I never use Gemini anymore, and instead have a PAYG plan on Deep Infra.
So, no, it is not astroturfing.
> I can tell you that I have a Gemini plus subscription I still don't have anything more recent than 3.6 Flash
Yeah, the newer models are not included in your $5 subscription. You can always pay for a higher tier plan if you want access. What is so shocking about that?
That plan doesn't even exist, so there's still definitely something not aligned here.
>That plan doesn't even exist
Gemini AI Plus does exist. Consumer plans are called Free, Plus, Pro and Ultra:
https://gemini.google/subscriptions/
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Option 1: A person who subscribed to a particular plan doesn't know what it is called.
Option 2: A person is unfamiliar with one of Google's plans.
Which one seems more likely to you?
https://one.google.com/intl/en_ca/about/google-ai-plans/
Yep, seriously. We live in a world where OpenAI and Anthropic each have about 60 different products named with variations of "Codex"/"ChatGPT" or "Claude", on top of a model matrix of about 100 different choices of name/version/reasoning level/variant. But somehow Google's comparatively streamlined offerings are impossibly confusing for HN to understand.
"How do I even pay for it?" is particularly baffling to me considering it's literally just included in their normal range of Google One subscriptions that bundle Drive/etc which have been around for years.
You pick a plan and pay for it, and sign in to whichever app you're using like Gemini chat (ChatGPT/Claude Chat) or Antigravity (Codex/Claude Code).
https://one.google.com/about/
AI Studio is the developer console (OpenAI Platform/Claude Platform). Vertex AI is the Google Cloud enterprise platform (using GPT or Claude models via AWS Bedrock/Azure AI Foundry).
Pretty much every product is a 1:1 equivalent with the same offering from OpenAI/Anthropic + Azure/AWS. Google is both a hyperscaler and an AI lab, so the venn diagram includes both the direct OpenAI/Anthropic products and what they also serve for enterprises via Azure/AWS.
I get that Google does bad stuff and isn't popular on HN which is understandable, but the specific criticisms really don't make sense. The entire AI developer/consumer space is messy and confusing but that's an industry wide complaint not specific to Google unless they should just not compete on certain verticals.
This is how it looks on the marketing pages not in real world.
For example: what is "Antigravity Entitlement"? You can buy whatever subscription (even Ultra or higher) you like and not have access to Antigravity at all. You will have to then go through some nebulous verification process which half the time is just broken. E.g. people in EU were for months blocked from verification by the Google app insisting they message an RCE number in US unreachable from EU carriers. But if you even get that far that’s actually a success. Most of the time it’s just "verification error" with no further explanation. Then you get to try to reach a human at Google. Hahaha, just kidding. That's impossible.
Then even if it works it can just log you out some day randomly and then have you go through all the verification again. Just because. Happened twice already.
Finally you have to consider what is the potential fallout of Google deciding you did some hacking or said to AI something politically incorrect and banning your entire account and all your (or even your family’s) connected accounts.
If you have anything important on Google you need to first degoogle before considering using their AI services or you're playing with fire.
The models are good but the risk to benefit ratio is terrible.
Like millions of people, I had a free Google Apps account for my family. I upgraded it to a paid Google Workspace when the free tier was terminated by Google because my dad actually uses it for some work features.
I can’t purchase any Google consumer products now, because this “family” account is now an “enterprise” and… there’s just no way. It can’t be done. No. Just… go away. Shoo…
I can’t get a YouTube “family” account.
I can’t get an Antigravity personal account.
Nothing works.
Google insists that I upgrade the entire organisation, or nothing. I can’t get an AI plan for just one “employee”!
It’s doubly stupid because like millions of people, I initially subscribed as a non-business and was forced to convert by Google!
Yep. I have to maintain a separate consumer gmail/google account for this exact reason. I end up paying for some things twice, such as Google Photos since I want those photos synced to my "enterprise" account. I've had this thing, like you, since it was free and somehow I'm now paying nearly $30/month for two people to have Email and storage for that email.
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