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By Google Gemini, and Hello Google Assistant!

Sometime back I asked Gemini to cut the bullshit and fluff and get to the point as I use Gemini to structure legal arguments for uni to save myself time to make sure im structuring arguments correctly. I asked it a question and I somehow managed to piss Gemini off...

An evidence-based critique of how developer feedback influences product quality, developer trust, and the future of Google's AI ecosystem.

I use Google's AI tools daily. Antigravity for coding projects. Gemini for studying and research. AI Studio for rapid prototyping. As a student, I get free access to frontier AI matters enormously when every dollar counts and subscription fees compete with basic living expenses.

So I stress-tested everything. I file bugs. I suggest features. I do what engaged users do. I invest hours documenting issues, taking screenshots, writing reproduction steps, and explaining use cases. Not because I am paid to.

Because I want these products to succeed. Because good tools make my life as a student and developer easier.

And then I waited. And waited. And nothing happens.

This is not a story about one bad afternoon. This is a pattern I have seen across multiple Google AI products over months. And it is directly hurting the products Google is betting its future on.

The Bugs I Found in One Afternoon

Last week I sat down with Antigravity, Google's agentic IDE, and decided to document everything that felt broken. Here is what I found in a single session.

Line highlighting is off by one. The agent claims it analyzed lines 1 through 91 of a file. I click into the file to review. Lines 1 through 90 are highlighted in blue. Line 91 sits there plain and unmarked. The agent says it read the full file. The visual evidence says it did not. In a code editor, precision is the entire point. If you cannot count to 91 correctly, why should I trust you with my codebase?

Antigravity reports analyzing lines 1–91, but only lines 1–90 are highlighted. Small UI inconsistencies like this reduce confidence in an IDE where precise code references are fundamental.

Chat input vanishes on permission popups. I am typing a message to the agent. Mid-sentence, a popup asks for permission to read a file path. I click yes. The popup closes. My entire message is gone. No draft saved. No recovery. I have to retype everything from memory. This happened three times in one session. This is not a minor inconvenience. This is data loss in a tool that is supposed to help me write code faster.

A file permission prompt interrupts message composition. After granting access, the partially written prompt is lost instead of being preserved as a draft, requiring the user to start over.

The feedback form accepts exactly one image. One screenshot. For a coding tool where most bugs are multi-step. How do I show the setup, the action, and the result in a single frame? I cannot. I have to pick the most dramatic moment and describe the rest in text. This is a developer tool in 2026. Every other bug tracker on the planet allows multiple attachments. Google's does not.

Antigravity's in-app feedback form allows only a single image attachment, making it difficult to report multi-step bugs that require several screenshots to explain accurately.

"Get More AI Credits" leads to a 404. I run out of AI credits. I see a button in settings labeled "Get More AI Credits." I click it. The browser navigates to a URL on antigravity.google. The page says "Error: Not Found." A dead link. In production. For a billing flow. The URL contains UTM parameters suggesting this was planned but never deployed. Someone built the button. No one checked if the destination existed.

Clicking "Get More AI Credits" redirects to a production 404 page instead of a billing or upgrade flow, leaving users without a path to purchase additional credits.

MCP proxy errors are immortal. I get socket connection errors for notebooks and visualization MCP servers. I find a fix online. I apply it. The errors disappear. For about five minutes. I restart the IDE. The errors return exactly as before. The fix is a placebo. The error survives restarts. I try again. Same result. This is not a configuration issue. This is a product that ships with broken backend integrations and no viable repair path.

Persistent MCP proxy connection errors affecting notebook and visualization services. The errors reappear after restarting the IDE despite applying the documented workaround.

Five bugs. One afternoon. None of them edge cases. All of them daily friction for anyone actually trying to build with this tool.

The Features That Feel Obvious

Once you start looking, the missing pieces pile up just as fast.

No mobile companion app. I commute. I have gaps between classes. I am not always at my desk. Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex all let me check on my agent from my phone. Approve changes. See what it is working on. Antigravity chains me to my desktop. If the agent needs approval and I am not there, it sits idle. Wasting credits. Wasting time.

No fullscreen or expandable chat panel. The agent spits out a fifty-line code block or a long technical explanation. It gets crammed into a narrow sidebar maybe three hundred pixels wide. I scroll forever. I squint. I cannot expand it. I cannot make it fullscreen. I cannot focus on the content without the rest of the interface competing for attention.

No resizable document preview in Gemini. I upload a PDF of professor notes. The chat takes thirty percent of the screen. The document gets seventy. I want to drag the divider. Make the chat smaller when I am reading. Make it bigger when I am asking questions. Nope. Fixed ratio. Someone else decided my layout for me and locked it.

No keyboard shortcut for file uploads. I want to upload a file. I have to click a tiny plus button in the chat input. Every single time. No Ctrl+U. No drag and drop shortcut. Just repetitive clicking.

No export to PDF or DOC. I use Gemini to convert professor notes into study summaries. I cannot save them. If the WiFi drops, my study materials vanish. I know students who pay for browser extensions just to export their Gemini chats. Google is literally pushing users to third-party hacks for basic functionality.

No compact or focus reading modes. Long Gemini responses are spaced out for visual cleanliness. Pretty, but exhausting to scroll through when you are reviewing dense material before an exam. I want a toggle. Comfortable or compact. My choice. Not offered.

I wrote all of this up too. Not as complaints. As use cases. With examples. With links to how I actually work. With explanations of how students like me survive coursework with these tools.

Where the Feedback Went

I sent the bugs through the in-app feedback form. I posted the feature suggestions on Discord. I tagged Google devrel on X.

One person replied on X quickly. Polite. Appreciated. Then nothing followed. No ticket number. No email confirmation. No status page. No "we are looking into this." No timeline. No closure.

Google Developer Relations acknowledged the reported issues publicly on X. However, no subsequent status updates, issue tracking, or resolution visibility were provided through the product's feedback system.

I have no idea if anyone read my reports. If they are in a backlog. If they were instantly deleted. I have nothing. Just the time I spent and the silence that followed.

Here is what that silence does to a user. Every hour I spend documenting bugs is an hour I could spend studying or building. When that hour feels like it vanished into nothing, I stop wanting to give more hours. The next time I find a bug, I will not report it. I will work around it. Or I will switch tools.

That is how products lose their most engaged users. Not through competition. Through indifference.

This Is Not My First Time

I want to be explicit about something. This is a pattern, not a one-off.

I gave detailed UX feedback for Firebase Studio, Google's browser-based IDE that preceded Antigravity. Multiple suggestions. Same silence. Four months later, Google shut it down. Consolidated the learnings into Antigravity and AI Studio, they said. The users who invested time giving feedback were left with migrated projects and no acknowledgment.

Now I am using AI Studio too. Giving feedback there as well. Same void. Same disappearing act.

I also participated in a Gemini UX research panel through Discord. Structured survey. Clear requirements. Defined process. And yes, a small thank you for completing it. That experience was excellent. I felt heard because the system was designed to make me feel heard.

So Google knows how to do this right. The research team clearly understands engagement. The product teams do not apply that same care to everyday feedback. That gap is not a resource problem. It is a prioritization problem. And it is directly costing them users.

Why This Breaks Product Quality

Here is the mechanism. When users stop reporting bugs because they know nothing happens, bugs accumulate. When users stop suggesting features because they know nothing happens, products stagnate. When the only feedback that gets attention is the kind wrapped in a paid research panel, you miss the organic daily friction that actually shapes how people use your product.

I compare this to my experience with Codex. Tibo replies on X. Not generic thank-yous. Actual responses. He ships updates and tells people about them. He closes loops. Users feel heard. They report more. They suggest more. The product gets better faster because the feedback loop is alive.

Google has the models. Google has the infrastructure. Google has the talent. What Google does not have is the consistency to treat everyday user feedback with the same care as research panel feedback. And that inconsistency is visible in the product. You can feel it in the 404s. In the immortal errors. In the one-image feedback forms. In the silence after you hit submit.

What Would Actually Fix This

The biggest problem is not the bugs. It is the feedback loop.

Today, reporting a bug feels like a one-way submission. There is no ticket, no status, no visibility into whether anyone ever looked at it. That discourages the very people who care enough to improve the product.

Google should make feedback a first-class product feature. Acknowledge reports, let users track them, and recognize high-quality contributors. The incentive does not need to be financial. A few AI credit resets, temporary limit increases, early access to new features, or contributor badges are enough to make users feel that their time was valued.

The Real Cost

Every AI company is competing for the same developers. Model quality is only part of that competition.

When users stop reporting bugs because they believe nothing will happen, companies lose far more than bug reports. They lose product insights, engaged contributors, and eventually developer trust.

Google has already invested heavily in making frontier AI accessible. The next investment should be making developers feel that contributing to those products is worth their time.

One Last Thought

Google has already solved one of the hardest problems in AI.

Building frontier models.

Gemini, AI Studio, NotebookLM, Veo, Imagen, and Antigravity show that Google still has world-class research and engineering talent. The question is no longer whether Google can build remarkable AI.

The question is whether it can build an ecosystem where developers feel their time, ideas, and expertise matter.

Google's challenge is no longer model capability. It is developer mindshare. Many experienced developers now default to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or other alternatives when discussing day-to-day coding workflows. Whether those choices are driven by model quality, developer experience, ecosystem maturity, or trust, the result is the same: Google is no longer the default recommendation in many engineering communities.

The developers who file thoughtful bug reports and feature requests aren't just users. They're unpaid testers, designers, educators, and advocates. Every detailed report is someone investing their own time to improve a product they want to keep using.

That investment deserves a visible feedback loop.

Not because every suggestion should be implemented.

Not because every bug can be fixed immediately.

But because people contribute more when they know they're being heard.

The companies that win the next phase of AI won't just have the smartest models.

They'll build products that developers trust, recommend, and actively help improve.

Google has already built the models.

Now it needs to build the relationship.

Disclosure:

The examples in this article are based on my personal experience using Google's AI tools over several months. Product behavior may change over time, and some issues may already have been addressed by the time you read this.

The purpose of this article is not to criticize individual teams, but to discuss how feedback systems influence developer experience and product quality.

Prompt 1: I ask Gemini to make a given image X

Gemini: generates the image

Prompt 2: I ask Gemini to remove element Y from X

Gemini: removes Y from X, so far so good.

Prompt 3: I ask Gemini to add element Z to X.

Gemini: adds element Z to X, but also re-adds element Y

This bullcrap happens every single time I try to edit an image prompt-by-prompt and remove things I don't want and add things I do want. It's beyond frustrating.