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Posted by speckx 1 day ago

Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration(ankursethi.com)
817 points | 322 commentspage 6
consumer451 1 day ago|
Wasn't this type of Google thing clearly called out in the Karpathy Software 3.0 talk?

It's interesting to me this UX problem is not readily solved.

What is the sticking point in a big org? I don't have a point of reference.

chillfox 1 day ago|
It will be politics, it's always politics. Large orgs works a lot like the feudal system.
consumer451 1 day ago||
I would like to think that this is why higher level execs get paid the truly big bucks... to cut through all of that.

Otherwise, this sounds a lot like "impenetrable government bureaucracy." I thought business was supposed to be better.

notepad0x90 1 day ago||
I think they're just too focused on enterprise billing. Someone at google doesn't get that individuals trying it out is how they go their work and recommend this stuff.

Googlers tend to exist in an isolated bubble. In the corporate world, Azure is the default and they have Azure OpenAI. Why would someone bother with Gemini? Unless the devs at companies have a good experience with it of course.

Googlers are awesome/mean well, if only enough of them lurked here :)

marcuskaz 1 day ago|
Developer experience matters. This is what Vercel figured out and why their admin screens are sooooooo much better than anything AWS or Google creates.
9rx 1 day ago||
"Developer experience matters" and "Vercel" being the example is something I never thought I would see together.

I actually do agree that Vercel's admin screens are quite good compared to the other usual suspects. But I don't consider that to be on the development side of things. It's done decently well because it is geared towards the business folks who are paying the bills.

Developers writing code on top of the development solutions produced by Vercel have been completely forsaken.

marcuskaz 1 day ago||
:thinking-face:

- How builds and deploys are configured

- The simple aspect of connecting a GitHub repo and you get auto deploys

- Auto creating branch environments that make testing as easy as a new link

- Just configuring users and permissions and not seeing IAM anywhere is a huge win

My billing admins don't do any of this stuff.

9rx 1 day ago||
None of those are development tasks. IT tasks, I'd buy, but anyone deeply entrenched in IT are more likely going to want more powerful tools (even if harder to use). Vercel is geared towards the small groups where there are some developers on staff, but the budget makers are playing double-duty in IT roles.
dvorka 1 day ago||
This is so true! But the adventure doesn't end there. I have 2 billing accounts from the past when I was building projects on AppEngine. Annual exercise to keep them alive (even if no action is needed in the end) is of similar complexity. Why do I need these accounts? Because I want to use Google services for which I don't pay.
cicloid 17 hours ago||
Amazon has Q, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot…

Names that mean everything, nothing or something based on what website you land or what sales pipeline you are on.

happyopossum 21 hours ago||
There are plenty of ways to get access to gemini - a single google search took me directly to the simplest way (subscribe to Google AI Ultra) in one click: https://one.google.com/intl/en/about/google-ai-plans/

The author apparently found himself on a much more difficult path, one designed for enterprises who are already on google cloud, already have billing set up, etc. The fact that an individuals experience with an enterprise platform isn't great is predictable... That's why there are individual/consumer plans for this stuff.

Alifatisk 21 hours ago||
The url you sent, when signing up, just sends me to my homepage where I get a overview of my subscription at one.google.com, I can't see where to access a api key
85392_school 21 hours ago||
Does it let you use Gemini 3 in Gemini CLI?
heystefan 1 day ago||
I had the same experience. Plus you never know what's the best way to use eg. Nano Banana -- it works better in AI Studio versus their regular Gemini chat.
windex 1 day ago||
Google's interface, UX and information flow is complete spaghetti. You never know what you will find and where. There is no one you can call either. I suspect they abandon their products because 50% of potential customers abandon their cart due to the workflow.
KerrickStaley 1 day ago||
In my personal experience, OpenRouter makes it easy to call Gemini 3 Pro Preview and other frontier LLMs with very little setup. It’s great for projects where you want to compare different LLMs or have the flexibility to switch. It charges a 5.5% fee on top of the base API price so at scale you would want to switch to directly calling the provider.
scosman 23 hours ago|
Gemini API keys are an absolute delight compared to VertexAI. It’s like Google decided the most important part of competing with AWS was a horrific console.
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