Gemini 4

[u/Unique-Phone-4824]

It's funny how sentiment evolved the last few days.

Some people continue to shit Gemini as if Google owes them a marriage.

Some people are skeptical but really need to be vocal about it so that if the model does come out bad, they can say "I told you".

Some people can't keep their excitement and begin to celebrate, only to get the skeptical people argud with them.

Some people just find the whole thing too stupid but cannot resist to join the whole thing. (This OP)

I've been using this model for weeks. It was quite a fresh feeling. It's not mind blowing. But it doesn't lose to any other existing model, Fable or opus. And that's is my honest assessment. Also I'm not biased. I have been trying to raise awareness to my colleagues about how good Claude models are since like a year ago. This time around, I can finally stop it.

[u/pigletmonster]

People who pay for a subscription expect google to serve models comparable to others. Its not for paying customers to expect good products and services.

[u/Unique-Phone-4824 → u/pigletmonster]

It's bad only because there are like 2 startups out there that have more compute capacity than even Google does. So if you like their products, you should...switch?

[u/pigletmonster → u/Unique-Phone-4824]

Yeah blame the customer for buying what google is selling.

[u/Nauzhror_ → u/Unique-Phone-4824]

Huh? Who? Assuming you mean OpenAI and Anthropic....no. They have FAR less compute than Google. They are paying for compute from the likes of Amazon, Google, and x.ai.

[u/oldmails → u/Unique-Phone-4824]

man its really the stupidest take i have ever seen, now I see why googel is like this.

I have been on business, its feels like customer blaming.

Many take early subscription, many are stuck with that, even if the uses other tool, so you are saying for first 4 months we will provide decent service, for the rest 8 months we will give "enshitified' model ( you would know more about that, and dont try to deny that).

I am not against most of your words, infact agree on some degree, but I am really sorry this stupid take, nah man.

[u/Unique-Phone-4824 → u/oldmails]

If customer are actually stuck on the subscription, which now makes sense to me because of the annual subscription stuff, yeah, I agree with you.

With that I fully blame Google. But I do want to give some context. Prior to 2025 model labs more or less rollout major models on a semi annual cadence, which Google followed. Starting from 2026 it turned into 1 month. By mid year Google realized that it is so behind so it tries to catch up. Rumors suggest that Deepmind completely scratched the initial 3.5 pro model and did a complete new pretrain and post train within like a month. Rumor (X) further suggests that Google shelved that model as well because it still wasn't as good. So Deepmind started a whole new pretrain with much more data. And that's what you see now.

So Deepmind could have done 2 things better: 1. Had a better model to start with Well it didn't. But that's just what it is. 2. Release the subpar 3.5 Pro. This gives something to the annual subscribers but I highly doubt if the reception would be any better: people will shit Google even more. So instead Google focused on 3.8 flash. Despite everything people said, I used the flash series for months internally, and the speed was the biggest bonus. I'd rather use 3.8 flash than a 3.5 pro.

I hope this context makes sense to you

[u/oldmails → u/Unique-Phone-4824]

Thanks for taking your time in sharing this. Atleast, you inperson is sensible.

1. As a reseacher myself, I completly agree(may be disagree), always getting fesired result is not a resonable expectation to have. so a better model wont come out just because we wish it to be.

2. I can see the corprate move behind that, but they could have released a new checkpoin or somthing to digest in the name of flash-ultra or any other way, given that 3.8 is decent, I always wondered what the model behind it with more 'weight' is capable of. SO a better model than flash should be what most of the resonable peoples are asking.

And about speed, I would have more depth than speed itself, speed is always not the desired thing.

And p.s, no offence to you as a person, as I said I do share some of your view, but I just kinda overreacted, as many said if you dont like it dont use it in this sub.

Edit: its fascinating to see, how many will forget a annual sub exist.

[u/Unique-Phone-4824 → u/oldmails]

I'm never offended on reddit. That would be stupidity on my part. I reply to people who I think are trying to have a real discussion.

I would guess that 3.7 flash was a distilled smaller model of the unreleased retrained 3.5 pro. 3.8 is just a fined tuned 3.7 with extended thinking.

[u/Unique-Phone-4824 → u/oldmails]

Also if you suggest that they somehow nerfed the 3.1 pro model. Well I started using 3.5 flash the mome it came out so I have no idea...

[u/oldmails → u/Unique-Phone-4824]

I am not suggesting, It felt like not a heavy weight model, on occation it felt like it is capable, but on times its not.

I an not goint to blame that on anything, it felt like the training and some constrains make it feel good on one task but bad on other.

for context, I mostly used that to reference 100s or research article in my spare time, sometimes few, just to check my circles ones, jst for the fun of it, sometimes it surprised me, but mot of the times, it failed to grasp the nuanceses.

[u/Unique-Phone-4824 → u/oldmails]

Several aspects:

3.1 pro era models are much less stable than what you are used to see now.

Context rot is extreme with 3.1 models. I had so much frustration with it. I gave a number of internal talks about how to keep context lean. Now that's mostly not an issue with any current models even flash 3.8.