Comment by qlte
1 day ago
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).
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.
Meanwhile, Microsoft allows enterprise accounts to purchase products for only a subset of their accounts instead of big-bang upgrading the "entire org".
With Microsoft, an org can mix and match E3, E5, or E7 licensing tiers on a per-user basis. Which makes sense, because not every employee is "the same"! This is just obvious if you stop and think about for more than a fraction of a second. As a random example, I work with an org in "transport". Their backoffice staff have a bunch of advanced cloud app licenses, their bus drivers do not, because their job isn't sitting in front of a PC all day!
Google. Just. Doesn't. Get. This.
It's all-or-nothing.
Upgrade the entire org, or nobody gets AI.
1 reply →