Posted by logickkk1 11 hours ago
If it wasn't for Gemini/Antigravity I'd have to go with a Max Claude plan, as it stands now I can get by with just a Claude Pro plan to get Opus when I need it, whilst using Antigravity as my day-to-day workhorse.
Unfortunately Gemini Flash became too expensive to use as a general purpose model (i.e. for AI features in Apps), luckily there are plenty of cheaper Chinese models to fill that gap now.
(I actually use a mix of both for some offline projects, nothing serious.)
GLM 5.2 is better, also cheaper, and almost as fast.
So essentially, a big L for Google. Combine this with them not being able to produce a frontier model this generation... hmm implications
[1]artificialanalysis.ai
I find that quite staggering. GLM is open weights
gemini-2.5-flash-lite: $0.10 input / $0.40 output
gemini-3.1-flash-lite: $0.25 input / $1.50 output
gemini-3.5-flash-lite: $0.30 input / $2.50 output (a 6.25x increase over 2.5!)
Now watch them deprecate Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite in the coming months...
Being able to ask questions to small open models seems.... obviously useful?
Use the right tool for the job. It's like asking why a screwdriver isn't good at sawing wood, or calling C a terrible language because it's hard to make CRUD apps with it.
Plus they are probably running these things on every Google search so saving tokens is a huge win for them.
Rankings for text are here https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text
For comparison of Free Tiers: - Gemini serves 3.6-flash (rank 12) - ChatGPT serves 5.5-Instant (rank 23) - Claude serves Sonnet 5 (rank 27) - Meta AI serves muse-spark-1.1 (rank 5)
While Meta AI serves the better ranked model, it doesn't end up working that well for other things. For example, if I ask "help me buy a new raincoat", it ends up suggesting a Cambodian website, whereas Google is well integrated with Google shopping. It doesn't have the same integration with GApps outside of Gmail/Calendar. A few other email connectors are available.
Claude has one of the best interfaces with connectors, skills, and plugins galore, but the model and limits are restrictive on the free tier.
Gemini, as far as I know, I've never hit a rate limit on Flash.
I believe Gemini is going to gain market share through the free tier funnel while serving models as cost-effectively as possible. People are going to use Gemini because they use GApps and Google.
ChatGPT and Anthropic are going to be competing for the API/Business users, but for everyone else they are going have to become Google before Google becomes them.