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points by solarpunk_enthu 1 day ago | 0 comments

Given how quickly the field is moving, showing benchmarks without releasing the model is quite meaningless. If they decide to release it in one month, there will probably be a stronger competition out there. And the benchmarks won't look as good.

[–] stbenjam 1 day ago

I can't tell if they're withholding access to manufacture some sense of scarcity but the delays are really prolonged. I'm nervous to use Gemini models anyway, as its attached to my Google account and I've seen too many people having their whole account banned for dubious reasons (with little recourse).

Also the whole "we're only releasing it to cyber defenders first" framing is weird, is any Gemini model an actual cyber risk?

[–] flurdy 1 day ago

I only use the Google models via OpenRouter. Partially as setting up directly is a pain, and keeping the Gemini CLI working was another pain but also as a buffer to protect my Google account as you mention

[–] nharada 1 day ago

I think it's because the model's not ready but earnings was today...

[–] rescripting 1 day ago

Fat lot of good that did as GOOG is down 10% after hours.

[–] andy_ppp 20 hours ago

I downloaded Anti Gravity to give it a try and it wanted me to sign into Google to even edit a file. Forget it.

[–] zhobbs 1 day ago

Could it be TPU/GPU availability? ie, is it possible that it's more profitable for their compute to be serving Anthropic models, so Gemini customers are stuck with lower compute available.

[–] vessenes 1 day ago

They've always been realllly slow to roll out stuff outside the org when it comes to AI. Most googlers themselves likely won't have access to this model internally.

[–] bitpush 1 day ago

Isnt it about risk?

Just because you saw your friend move to a new country for a job doesnt mean you will make the same choices, even if you are similarly qualified.

[–] pseudosavant 1 day ago

100%. They don't even suggest a release timeline other than "we look forward to bringing Carbon to developers, businesses, and consumers soon". Claude and GPT-6.x will no doubt have improved versions by the time "soon" comes around.

Has there ever been a product category where a product release is valuable for a shorter time than with LLMs? Trying to build SOTA models seems like it'd be an exhausting hamster wheel to work on.

[–] Silagi 1 day ago

A lot of the work is carried over model to model, so I think the most comparable product is a live service game. Always have to be building on the last thing, and if you stop you'll essentially lose the entirety of the initial investment because you won't keep anyone's attention. Plus a healthy dose of "winner-takes-most".

Just. Yaknow. 100x the costs, at the least.

[–] londons_explore 1 day ago

When every day matters to profitability, I'm really surprised providers do voluntary cyber security testing or government approval in the critical path.

To be honest, if I were an LLM provider I would be wiring up my release process to be fully automated so within 10 mins of the last bit of fine-tuning it got released and a blog post posted.

[–] xnx 1 day ago

Google is in it for the long haul, not to IPO before they run out of money.

[–] pseudosavant 1 day ago

That is a pretty major differentiator versus OpenAI/Anthropic. Public markets won't be kind to the amount of money Anthropic loses every quarter. I'm expecting for it be many *many* quarters before OpenAI or Anthropic get anywhere near profitable. They'll never be able to grow revenue fast enough to catch up with their current level of investment.

This is when I feel like OpenAI and Anthropic could be the Yahoo and AOL of this iteration of the internet. The center of the universe for a bit, but a limited number of days at the top.

[–] londons_explore 23 hours ago

I dunno... DeepSeek has much lower prices, yet still demonstrated substantial profitable inference compared to hardware rental costs.

It all depends how many billions are going to paying salaries...

[–] joquarky 1 day ago

We need to bring back the term "vaporware".

[–] pradn 1 day ago

It doesn't seem possible to actually release frontier models quickly any more. Given their cyber capabilities, playing nice with the powers that be is probably required these days.

[–] brokencode 1 day ago

Somehow OpenAI and Anthropic have been releasing new models on the day of announcement.

Seems like Google could do it too.

[–] jeremyjh 1 day ago

They have to announce it now because by the time they are ready to release it, it won't be the best at anything.

Anthropic and OpenAI are not releasing their best models for several months, because their second best models are still better than everything else available.

[–] hiddencost 1 day ago

They released Argon shortly after announcing it, so I think some benefit of the doubt is reasonable here. They claim they're already evaluating it via the government.

I suspect they're announcing it for two reasons: to get ahead of all the leaks; and because it's earnings report day.

[–] user43928 1 day ago

Doesn't Google have a particularly bad record recently at making their models publicly available?

Especially on their Plus tier for Gemini.

I think it's a fair concern that this might take weeks and trail Fable 5.5.

[–] spankalee 1 day ago

They released Argon shortly after announcing it, so I think some benefit of the doubt is reasonable here.

[–] willis936 1 day ago

Released to who? Workspace pro accounts are still on 3.1. Google's story isn't self consistent here.

[–] hn_go_brrrrr 1 day ago

Google has always hated Dasher users. They're just continuing the long tradition.

[–] hangrybear666 1 day ago

I've bought my girlfriend a Google ai plus sub because she's not a developer and just wants some search and image generation but the fact that she's still stuck on flash 3.6 is a joke, why would I keep paying for that at this point

[–] deno 1 day ago

If you have Pro or Ultra you could add her to "family", up to 5 people can share one subscription. Also up to 5 people can share the potential account ban. Otherwise cool feature, I recommend.

[–] wasabi991011 1 day ago

Not really[1]. I had access to Argon within an hour of the release announcement.

The Google AI Plus tier does not give better model access than free, it is strictly for usage limits. Same thing as ChatGPT Go (which currently only has access to GPT-5.6 Luna, same as the free tier too.)

[1] For consumers at least. IIRC google business/entreprise accounts have worse model access even in the business/entreprise version of Google AI Pro.

[–] hiddencost 1 day ago

I think the majority of traffic is from Enterprise customerd that goes through their API. Their consumer facing products do lag, but I don't think they care.

[–] diegolas 19 hours ago

i got argon the day it was released on a subsidized (student) pro account

[–] mirekrusin 1 day ago

As long as it's from US lab, it'll also have to go through US apparatus.

[–] tjwebbnorfolk 1 day ago

huh?

[–] mirekrusin 1 day ago

It's not them who decides if they can release it to the public but US government.

Once government clear it, it'll become available.

Same delay process will happen to new frontier models from other US labs.

[–] utopcell 1 day ago

It's in preview, no?

[–] lifeisloving 1 day ago

It makes the best case for why Anthropic isnt worth its potential valuation. Anthropics customers are almost only turbo nerds.

Google has the products, the brand recognition, the hardware, the data and most importantly a billion normies.

Google was always going to win this thing, although I wouldn't discount meta. The only thing that matters is mindshare and Anthropic and OpenAI have largely generated NEGATIVE sentiment, outside some fanboys.

Google and Meta can plop cute products into your daily driver apps and you wont know the difference.

[–] pennomi 1 day ago

If Google is going for the casual group of users, why do they make their AI offerings so hard to buy?

[–] gimlichgu 1 day ago

because selling inference is not their end-goal product, its just a milestone to continue to maintain positive public sentiment and attract talent

[–] helpyou840 1 day ago

> its just a milestone to continue to maintain positive public sentiment and attract talent

Google’s talent is solid B tier in 2026. Better than IBM but worse than Microsoft and Amazon.

Even if Google had “talent” this talent wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything due to corporate politics.

[–] kridsdale1 1 day ago

I work at Google. My response to your comment would get me banned from HN.

[–] tjwebbnorfolk 1 day ago

I worked at Google up until 2 months ago. In my exit survey, the #1 reason I left: "Bureaucracy"

[–] lifeisloving 1 day ago

Thats kind of the brilliant thing, you dont need to seek it out. Their AI will just slowly get integrated into their products you already use. I'm more so saying that normies will use AI when it lands in the apps they already use. Google AI features have been popping up all over their ecosystem. Normies do not want claude code and they think Dario and Sam are both disgusting human beings, stictly off of vibes.

Anthropics only moat is vendor lock on Claude Code, especially if they cant maintain being the front runner of the frontier model space, this is a really brittle moat. Brittle moats wont attract strong investment at a 1-2T valuation (not to mention all the other fiscal unknowns).

I just want OpenAI and Anthropic to lose because they seem to be the ones going around saying they're going to replace peoples jobs, and usurp the value of human labor.

Id rather Meta and Gemini suceed who will genuinely just integrate it into normal products we already use. Their sales teams are not approaching my boss and telling them they can reduce their payroll burden by spending my paycheck on tokens and firing me.

Coding is going to be one of the smaller pieces of the AI revolution. People on this site are focused on it, but there are 10000x more opportunities outside of coding where Anthropic and OpenAI have zero presence. Anthropic might as well be an IDE company, Is jetbrains worth 2T? to signal that they can be useful in other fields because they know this is an issue.

[–] yunwal 6 hours ago

> Normies do not want claude code

I don’t think this is really true. If you work at tech companies the people in non-technical roles all request Claude code access, and I think this will gradually expand to most people who aren’t vehemently anti-AI

[–] usef- 1 day ago

> they seem to be the ones going around saying they're going to replace peoples jobs, and usurp the value of human labor.

I don't see why an alternative provider that is quiet but also scrambling to make AI smarter is any safer for jobs. Wouldn't we rather orgs speak honestly about the risks of the industry?

I find it odd that we talked for decades about companies being evil for covering up problems (chemical companies, etc), yet it turns out people hate the ones that talk about risks openly even more.

[–] TuxSH 1 day ago

> Google has the products

Outside their most successful products (YouTube, Android, GMail, Chrome, Search), their products are usually worse than their competitors (e.g. GMeet vs Zoom)

> the brand recognition

Of not maintaining/outright abandoning their products, and making Search worse over the years?

> most importantly a billion normies

ChatGPT has 1.2B weekly active users, all the normies know what ChatGPT is but don't know about Gemini (outside the "AI Mode" stuff)

[–] Marsymars 1 day ago

> (e.g. GMeet vs Zoom)

I dunno if that's a great example - I'm sure Zoom has more awareness in the zeitgeist, but from my standpoint it's an app most well-known for security problems and abusing OS conventions, while Google Meet just quietly and simply works whenever I want to call my mom.

[–] HFguy 1 day ago

Agree 100%. I generally find Google Meet to be the least bad video conference option (with Teams = Worst).

[–] jfoster 1 day ago

If you go from Zoom to Google Meet you will notice a massive difference in audio quality.

[–] willis936 1 day ago

Google meet screen sharing is a horrendous UX, reactions are clunkier than zoom, the tiling options are worse than zoom, and I have yet to see a conference room setup that actually works with HDMI inputs.

But yeah, other than that meet is fine.

[–] RajuChacha108 1 day ago

Outside of their successful products their products are terrible isn't even an argument.

They have many successful products. Most have only 1-2.

Youtube, Android, Chrome, Search, Photos, Workspaces, Cloud, Fitbit, Pixel Phones, Waymo not to mention dozens of open source projects.

> Of not maintaining/outright abandoning their products, and making Search worse over the years?

You just said their products are terrible. They do shut the products that do not meet the bar. That is good thing.

> ChatGPT has 1.2B weekly active users, all the normies know what ChatGPT is but don't know about Gemini (outside the "AI Mod

No one needs to know what Gemini are. If they have used search they have used it.

[–] kridsdale1 1 day ago

The Gemini app has the same number of users almost as GPT app. Sundar said so today.

[–] pstuart 1 day ago

Sure, bug Google always seems to be unable to deliver good UX. UX matters if it's bad enough and there are competing options that are much friendlier and easy to engage.

[–] lifeisloving 1 day ago

Android is a UX, and so is gmail and calender. This is where 99% of people will use AI for the remainder of their lives. Very little of the forward looking value proposition of AI has to do with coding/harnesses. AI + coding is rapidly deflating as far as revenue potential, and TAM has been saturated and is possibly shrinking.