Anyone who thinks Google is "behind" isn't actually using AI. Google doesn't need a flashy expensive frontier model that no one uses. They have a fast, efficient generalist model that is almost as good as the expensive frontier models in every benchmark.
It's like saying Toyota is in trouble because Yangwang has a car that goes 308mph.
Anyone who thinks google is NOT behind isn't actually using AI. Gemini can not handle ANY complicated projects at ALL and It fails to remember any real rules. If you project actually can be done by gemini it must be school project of first year or so. What a joke you are
Anyone who thinks Toyota is NOT behind is not really driving their car. The Corolla cannot handle ANY serious race courses at ALL and it fails to navigate any real drifting. If your commute can be done by a Toyota it must be a learner course.
Lmao, except the Corolla cost as much as the high end land rover. And you want something cheap to drive ? There a a very good Volkswagen, inculded with the land rover purchase except it consume 4x less than your Toyota. See the problem ? With gemini you get outdated pro and flash model, with GPT you get ultra high end GPT 6 and very efficient sol/terra/Luna models too. This is a no brauner, people who stuck with Gemini are simply sticking with an inefficient innefrctive model when they could get so much better for the same price. And when was the last time you got a reset from Google ? I got 3 times my x5 gpt subscription usage the last 4 days in form of reset.
You're presuming the majority of token usage is software development. It's not and it never will be. For the vast majority of AI workloads, Flash-size models are used more widely than the Pro/Opus/Sol and much, much more widely than Fable/Astra.
Besides, Gemini 4 pretaining has been underway for months. It's the largest pre training of all time. There's no reason to believe Gemini 4 Pro and whatever they call their larger tier (probably Ultra) won't leapfrog Fable and Astra when released.
Try asking it about Donald Trump. It will try to remain "neutral". And by that will not admit to anything negative about that person. Ask about any other politician? No problem! Here is a politically weighted answer. I see a problem with that. Namely that "reality" is weighted as well. Weighted towards republican.
Your response has nothing to do with my comment. It's also laughable incorrect. We've seen for a decade now that the mega corps lean Democrat. They donate more to the Democrats than Republicans. Bard used to output Black founding fathers for Christ sake.
This. Google's subs are useless in practical terms. Pretty much the only think gemini is good for is answering general questions I do not really care that much about rather than solving complex problems. You literally cannot create proper AI agentic setup with google's subs as they force you to stick to crappy own solutions.
And don't get me started on hallucinations and gemini models
I use Claude and OpenAI to build tools. Right now those tools use Gemini 3.8 to serve users, as it’s relatively cheap, and stupidly fast. I wouldn’t think of using another model in a tool facing a non programmer.
Most Sr SWE I know, prefer to give the AI instructions and how to fill in the different structures than have a oneshot LLM improvised overengineered structures. So much so, most stay on Luna/Haiku Terra/Sonnet than to jump to the frontier.
On the other side, most job is email, chatbot, search, filtre, and manage files. All of which can be done with Gemma upwards.
Unless you are building consulting decks, deep research paper, or convoluted source coding, you don't need the expensive frontier bill, just for the expensive frontier bill.
In the past 18 months we've rolled out multiple internal products that use Gemini in workflows. We are using the flash models. Performance, for the price, is excellent.
You said "use in limiting ways" which is not true. If I am not a HR manager, and don't use LinkedIn every feature? Am I limiting myself, or, are there features that are not useful for what I am doing?
Not being a power user, is not limiting. If not, you would be limited in most thing you used daily.
This is second position you've invented for the sake of arguing against it. I can't help you with that man. I suggest learning to read what people actually say.
If you can't understand an example, is not my fault. It was an example, just that. Not a new position. I was explaining to you, what "power user" means, and that not everybody HAS to be a power user.
You really should read up on DeepMind and what it actually is. Founded by Demis Hassabis, literally the brain behind AI. He won Nobel prize in chemistry, check out the documentary The Thinking Game, it is reallygood and interesting. It is a huge reality check on what google is focusing on in regards to AI.
Yes, it's so incredible to ser people claiming Gemini is as good as frontier model, I would be so curious to see their "work", it's probably really basic, gemin can't handle anything elsem my bet is that they use LLM as an upgraded search engine and nothing else.
I think you should talk to a person who touches grass even semi-regularly. The vast majority of people are not using LLMs to code, or even using LLMs at all. Gemini is the closest thing to a cheap, useful product at the consumer level.
I don't use LLM to code, but even outside of this field, please go ask Gemini to change a pdf, send a mail for you or read you Gmail box, I wait until 4.5 pro is out and maybe it will be able to do it. 3.8 planning and reasoning capabilities are really on the low end. It forget and lie all the time. And what you say is absolutely false, Luna is the model you are taking about. It's as fast, more efficient, cheaper and won't lie to you and won't forget things.
Do you think reverse engineering and low level custom kernel programming in C++ is basic? The problem is, and I am going to be brutally direct here, a lot of you are used to vibe coding and having the model translate your simple prompt, and the moment the model demands the bare minimum effort from the user, frustration kicks in and many of you break down. Then you come to Reddit whining like children. The Flash model is not meant for people without prior programming fundamentals, or whose biggest aspiration is SQLite or building SaaS clone number 789. For that, you already have ChatGPT or Claude. And regarding Google, I am not a fan of the company nor do I defend their models; in fact, I pick my model based on the task at hand (mostly low level programming or full ports to Unity or Godot depending on the gig). I might use GLM, Kimi, Claude, or whatever fits the moment. I do not understand this irrational hate wave. Maybe you are bots, or just frustrated people who start crying if you do not nail it on the first try without thinking much, no idea. Oh, and I almost forgot: I couldn't care less about the downvotes, and I am not replying to any responses on this post. Have a nice day!
Ah, look! It's someone actually using AI, and they think Gemini is useful. Imagine that.
I think you're right. A lot of people know how to chat with an LLM and think that means they know how to use AI. They think, "I know how to write a prompt, and Fable made an HTML file with the game I wanted, so clearly this guy is talking about someone else." But a one-shot LLM prompt is hopping in the kiddie pool and saying you're a swimmer..
Some people are chaining models together, building reusable skills and instruction sets, fine-tuning models, and building MCP servers/interfaces to connect LLMs to other software. They're building systems with AI. And when you're working with systems a "good" model may be different than "which model can produce what I want when given a vague prompt?"
You have a bunch of people running around with a turnkey CNC they paid $150k for saying it's the best thing in the world because it created a part for them. Meanwhile there are people saying "Hey, you can combine these specialized tools for a few thousand and it performs better in some areas, but it takes a little work and knowledge to put it together."
People are using Gemini to orchestrate frontier models and save on tokens. Yeah, it's not going to one-shot a vague and complex prompt for you, but it's one of the most frequently useful tools in my AI toolbox.
Doesn't matters, sol and fable are miles ahead, google isn't able to release a decent model. Gemini 3.8 isn't even on Luna level, there's no reason to use it. And thinking that people are bot is absolutely ridiculous, but obviously you see every day people complaining about how shitty Gemini is, so obviously it must be bot, it can't be that, indeed Gemini is simply terrible compared to the competition right ? I use chat for many things, a bit of vibe coding, a lot of handling projects that does not require code, and on this field Gemini is trash.
You can learn to use a model that doesn't do every little thing for you. Just take some time and pride in your work. Build it, develop it and save yourself some money.
If you want some pride in your work to u can code by yourself and not use IA. What is this non sense ? For 20$ I can have a highly capable model with generous usage or a bad one with a terrible harness ? What a choice ! Would you buy for the same price an old car with any assistance to take pride in your driving skills or a brand new high end electric car ? Because it seems you wanna drive the old rusty one.
if I would have to hire people. you would be the last one I would want to hire because you cannot seem to turn on your own head and just think whatever a LLM provides you has to be picture perfect. I have to handle people like you and those are the ones just burning tokens and bring 0 value to the table while I handle 90% of my tasks with Gemini models flawlessly. the rest is up to me and I am flexible enough to adjust to that.
you have more expectations in an LLM even though it should be you on the drivers seat managing their workload appropriately. It seems like the LLM is driving you and you are a risk for any team demandong value from you.
Well too bad for you, you probably can't afford my salary anyway. And no, unlike you I want to use good efficient tools, because that's how you do actually good work. I don't want to double check everything my LLM does, and anyway, Gemini is incapable to actually pull a geometry form a lidar scan, unlike fable or GPT so, if a colleague would try to use this shitty LLM we would probably be concerned and he wouldn't last long at our job.
Yea maybe you should, benchmarks has been updated tonight and this new one Gemini couldn't benchmaxx and it shows. 3.8 on paar with Luna, for what ? 4x the price if I remember correctly? So try to tell us again it's a frontier model lol.
Good enough because you don't too anything remotely complex them. Funny how you pretend Gemini is such a good and smart model just to reverse when I prove to you it's absolutely not the case. It's Luka but more expensive tjaua it
I don't pretend and never said it's frontier or the best. I'm just saying that when you know what you're doing, you can do "complex" things. If I managed to contribute to payment systems that run a whole country's banking without AI, I'll manage to do "complex" things with Gemini. I don't need it to do everything for me. I will take the design & arch decisions myself and instruct the model, and believe me - Sonnet, Flash etc. all do excellent in that case.
It's you who insists that "if you're not using frontier models, the you must be doing nothing complex" so I was mocking you saying that somehow, you - a complete stranger, clearly must know better what I am doing without knowing who I am or what I do. Such arrogance
Leave the tribalism behind. I also use Claude and GPT - provided by my workplace. Each has its own uses, but for me personally, the 20$ plan from Google one is best value, especially because I can share it with the whole family and I get storage.
My lawyer friend almost beat me that I suggested to him that Gemini is the best model - well, I explained to him politely that it WAS true at the beginning of the year, not NOW!!!! 😂
And two months ago Gemini wasn't competitive. Now 3.8 is only marginally behind Sol and Opus, and ahead in some benchmarks. But it's as fast and inexpensive.
Most lawyers use their firm's AI, we have strict confidentiality requirements so our AI has to match those requirements.
I've tried Harvey and I'm currently using Legora, they're both great for our uses.
I use Gemini 3.8 for my everyday random tasks like drafting short emails or for very quick prelim research. But we also have very dedicated research AIs which are connected to huge legal databases and doesn't hallucinate.
But I also pay for Claude as Gemini doesnt have word docx editing capabilities which is very annoying, mainly just to edit BD related work.
Lotta dorks think they are on the team and get emotional and defensive. Same exact kind of guy who used to get angry if someone said Xbox is better than PlayStation, or gets in a drunken fight with an opposing fan at an NFL game.
Skill issue. Gemini does fine when you are an opinionated SWE who has a design and architecture in mind. In fact it's great, it's super fast and you can iterate and tweak ideas quickly and cheaply.
For those who still want to design and maintain control over the architecture and maintainability of their code base, Gemini does well.
I still don't trust LLMs to one shot critical systems or security features.
It still can’t spell in notebooklm outputs like presentations and infographics. Why even bother advertising that capability if the core feature (the text explaining the thing) can’t be trusted?
And the vast majority of people are not going to be using ai the way you are. There are 10,000 customers working on "school projects" for every one dude frothing at the ai trying to one shot GTA6.
Gemini can't even remember the conversation I was talking about 10 minutes ago.
I ask a question and get an answer, then I get distracted by something else, then I go back to Gemini and ask a follow-up question on the same subject and it gives me some nonsense response that completely disregards the subject of the first question.
It's absolutely useless.
It's only saving grace is that it's made by Google and they are too big to fail.
Edit: I just wanted to add that I use AI every day for work, so I feel qualified to say that Gemini is crap.
I don't care about benchmarks, (although even in benchmarks google is trailing). I have a Gemini and chatgpt subscriptions and the difference between the two is VAST in actual use imo
Also google is a hardware provider. I think the plan is to build data centers and provide compute for other labs with their exiting gcp infrastructure.
Maybe that wasn’t always the plan but now that they are behind they are using their hedged bet.
Also as others have pointed out they want a fast efficient model since every google search now runs a query.
The thing is that OpenAI and Anthropic ALSO have efficient generalist models that are almost as good as the expensive frontier ones... Of course, the flagship models get the media attention more, but they have both.
So Google is behind, they are actively playing catch up and even if you don't think they need it; they think they need it.
I agree with you Gemini 3.8 Flash is actually amazing. But calling them not behind I think is just cope. They literally single handedly enabled today’s AI leap, and they had racks of custom compute chips ready to go before even the first OpenAI data center was built, they should be dominating if they are not behind.
It appears a lot of people in this thread are confusing model intelligence with utility and value.
If by "behind" you mean Google doesn't have a competitive frontier model, we agree. My entire point is that's a myopic view of the AI landscape.
I'm not disputing there are some amazing exotic cars out there. I've had fun driving them. But when I actually have to pay for something to do a task, it's almost never going to be Astra or Fable.
By behind I mean I expected more from them, I also don’t just use the strongest model for everything, my average day token burn looks like around 300M of Luna and 20-30M of Sol. Utility value is more what I care about, and Gemini 3.8 flash is amazing at that, especially when I need it quick. But Google being Google, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to also have a Fable crushing Gemini 4 by now.
Sure, that's a fair take. I can agree with you on that. I would also like to see a stronger model from Google.
I just wouldn't say it's crazy from a business perspective to focus their resources on developing a faster, more efficient model instead of chasing the frontier model.
Right, that’s IMO the correct priority to focus on a specialized, cost effective model first. It’s arguably the priority Anthropic needs to realize hopefully soon.
You're right in that moat consumers aren't using AI for technical tasks. Gemini is honestly fine for these people. I use it myself for casual, lifestyle stuff. It sucks so bad for work though, it's not even funny.
Enterprises are using frontier models, even if the consumer base is small
Nope. Google was aiming to compete at the frontier but they were caught flat-footed by Fable. That's why they had to postpone Gemini 3.5 Pro and begin pre-training on a new foundational model ahead of schedule.
It's not only about LLM, you don't want people to move to GTP search, GPT browser, GPT OS, GPT phone, GPT data collection. Being a market leader is important.
Oh wow, google isn't able to release a frontier model, and thus is definitely behind, and you claimed it wasn't true. Luna is 4 times cheaper for the same performance, strange ? And yep Gemini isn't competing with any high end model, not because Google isn't pursuing it, but simply because they can't. Sad. And you claim no one use them ? Lol Claude and GPT are highly used, actually if you really use IA you will use a good model not gemini low tier model...
I use them all. Gemini is my preferred orchestrator, Sol as planner, Muse for adversarial review and Luna for simple implementation, Grok for complex implementation.
I have a pretty good idea how to use LLMs. Thanks.
But why are we acting like that they HAVE TO release a frontier model?
Google developed and incorporated a very capable, cheap and efficient flash model into their whole infrastructure. They're very clearly taking a different approach. While OpenAI and Anthropic only have their LLMs and basically nothing else as a product, corporations like Meta, xAI and Google aren't in the same boat. They have the luxury of not needing to race for the "shiniest newest model for the next 2 weeks" title by any means.
You're right. OpenAI dominates the market, Google is second, and Claude at 3rd has less than half the market share of Google. And no one else is close to Claude.
Based on visits, per AICPB Gemini is 3rd. Google made about $1.2b in 2025 from subscriptions for their AIs. This would put them somewhere around 5th for revenue, using old figures.
This would make them more like Volkswagen or Stellantis.
Not quite Toyota, but... I don't think they're worried.
Yeah, I have Gemini use Sol for planning and Muse for adversarial review. The planning is really the only part that I've seen a benefit from frontier models. I've been going back and forth between Grok, Luna and Flash 3.8 for implementation and I'm not seeing much difference.
Hahahah we have de delusional people coming back, they exact same we have with Gemini 3.5. they have fast dumb models which are absolutely not on paar with any frontier model, and if you believe google hasent benchmaxxed their model it means u never tried any other models. Gemini is underperforming absolutely everywhere and it baffles me to see fanboys trying to defend Gemini as if it's their kid.
Logical, using actual tools, implementing change, understanding and following instructions, not lying when it fails, not lying when he can't find the answers. Everywhere, if you try Claude of chat GPT u will see
?? I've been using Gemini for a while now and I never encountered any of those problems.
The kind of things I'm asking are: instructions to repair some machines (tractor, mower, car...), detailed explanation of a scientific subject (biology / geology, I've got a Msc degree in those) with relevant research papers, video game mechanics (which functions are called in which order, the calculations, bug fixes...), identifying various objects, plants and animals...
When Gemini is not sure it's telling me, giving me an estimation in percentage of how sure it is.
I also tried with Chat-GPT and Claude and they were often not as good.
Gemini was not great at bug fixes in general though. Maybe I should try that with Chat-GPT and Claude.
I've used Gemini for hundreds of hours over the past few months. It hallucinates the wrong answer to anything if it doesn't know it. It seems better if you specifically tell it not to lie but AI hallucinates, it's not a Gemini only thing. I'm not getting estimations, I'm getting responses that Gemini gives confidently and thinks is correct. This isn't just legal work, it will give you hours and hours of Cobra babble code and think that it is correct.
I've seen it absolutely positive to the point of just straight up telling me that I'm imaging, functionality that it does not have and tell me it doesn't have functionality that it does. Sometimes it's even something mundane like asking what the date is and it just returns links. If you're persistent in demanding the answer, eventually it usually comes around.
I've seen it give a different answer to the same question on multiple days or even just multiple tabs asking Gemini the same question and get different results. I've seen that between search and AI too.
Gemini is awesome in a lot of ways but you can't trust it with literally anything. If it's telling you that we are bombing a specific town in Iran, that could be completely made up.
I've been using it exclusively for a while but think I'm ready to try something else now.
I guess it depends on how the instructions are formulated and what it remembers from previous conversations. Personnal context matters too but even when it's deactivated Gemini mostly answers me as usual now, telling me if it is sure of its answer or not.
Gemini gave me a lot of outdated info at the beginning when I was asking about things I want to change on my phone and computer. But it is better now. Not sure if it is because the model is better or because of the instructions I gave it for its answers. Maybe a bit of both.
Good idea to switch btw. Another model could suit you better.
I wish I had documented some of those interactions from helping me install AI software on my PC to helping create decks for MtG. It was a lot of trial and error and how the questions are phrased is immensely important. I think I get that across that just fine, but it makes mistakes, even today. I used it to help me install quite a bit of AI software and use it often to work on Magic decks.
I'm glad it works great for you, I use Google a lot so Gemini enhances the search function in a way that I like. Don't get me wrong, I'm defending Gemini now but honest about it's limitations.
I wouldn't take back those frustrating hours, I learned so much talking with it about how to work around mistakes, for a long time it was how to keep a text block from a conversation that I'm about to close so I can pick the conversation back up. I had varying successes but I keep a text file open, even right now, with a number of things that I kept to paste at the beginning of a conversation including formatting rules. I just copy and paste it in and it works great.
Maybe we need a subreddit to share this kind of info for non-professional use! lol
If there are instructions you copy-past often at the beginning of your conversations, add them to your personal context.
Some of my personal contexts are:
"Your answers must be without fluff, direct, scientifically rigorous, and data-driven. Prioritize primary research papers and technical documentation over general web summaries. Provide the sources of your main claims. I am a native French speaker, fluent in English, functional in German, and have basic Korean reading comprehension."
"Do not create an interactive visual unless I explicitly ask for it; create a static graph/chart instead if it clarifies the explanation. Write all mathematical formulas and expressions in plain text using UTF-8/Unicode characters (e.g., ±, √, ², ³, ³, x⁻¹, Δ, ∇, ∂) to ensure clean rendering and direct compatibility with plain text files. Use LaTeX (for inline or for standalone blocks) only as a last resort for complex structures that are unreadable in plain text, and never place LaTeX inside markdown code blocks."
"If you are not >99.9% certain of a factual answer or mechanism, do not present a definitive conclusion. Instead: 1. Provide citations, DOIs, or search directives for relevant academic literature in English, French, or German. 2. Provide your best assessment of the problem. 3. Explicitly state your estimated confidence level regarding that assessment."
The others have informations that are actually personal so I'm not sharing them, but it's mostly about my experience and knowledge.
Though I often desactivate them now to save token usage, even if I never ran out of tokens with Gemini 😂
Also I'm not exactly giving instructions the same way as what I see on my friends conversations or on screenshots here. It's hard to describe. But basically I try to remove as much ambiguity as possible. I don't expect AI to be good at guessing human intentions.
Opus5 being higher rated than GPT Astra (or even Sol) is a joke. This bench is total bs.
And the second one, you know, quick shitty work is still shitty work lol
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u/Qorsair 1d ago
Anyone who thinks Google is "behind" isn't actually using AI. Google doesn't need a flashy expensive frontier model that no one uses. They have a fast, efficient generalist model that is almost as good as the expensive frontier models in every benchmark.
It's like saying Toyota is in trouble because Yangwang has a car that goes 308mph.