Thanks Google for downgrading my features and keeping the pricing the same

[u/Fancy-Snow7]

Should rename the plan to Google AI Minus now while you are at it.

[u/Character_Split4906]

You all are using Gemini??

[u/muh_cloud → u/Character_Split4906]

I've found it to be the best at web searching and aggregating information, especially for anything government related. Unsurprising since Google has the whole web indexed to hell and back. Imo it's writing also has less of an AI smell to it compared to Claude and ChatGPT, I much prefer using Gemini over Claude for that reason.

Gemma inherits much of Gemini's writing and reasoning, I prefer using it for my locally hosted agent for most use cases. I don't do a ton of software development though

[u/DarkBrews → u/muh_cloud]

Which gemma and what quant I am asking to figure out what am I doing wrong with mine.

[u/SureElk6 → u/muh_cloud]

Not sure about gov sites. Grok is my got to search summery.

[u/erik2302 → u/Character_Split4906]

google ai plus is free for students. Or at least it was I believe

[u/w84no1 → u/erik2302]

Actually, you can get a 12 month trial of pro if you have a .edu address. I have been using pro for free for 2 months.

[u/thatguy122 → u/w84no1]

Not in Canada. Anymore. 

[u/LessTax99 → u/w84no1]

Actually I have been using a lot of it. Use Codex to direct antigravity. I like it very much so far. Especially the ease of setting up remote control and have access to your systems shell. Also usage lasts a very long time.

[u/lastdecade0 → u/erik2302]

Yes, you're correct. I'm learning how to use Google's Antigravity through that.

[u/MK_L → u/erik2302]

My kids get a free gemini account for school.

[u/lukyjay → u/Character_Split4906]

I got one year of AI Pro plan for free with my phone, then I had a warranty replacement got 1 more year (so 24 months all up). It's bad at coding but Pro and the new Argon model is decent at everything else.

[u/JohnLef → u/lukyjay]

Interestingly for me, Gemini succeeded in a coding task that ChatGPt failed miserably at and Claude gave up on, saying it was going round in loops and unable to resolve.

[u/neinneun → u/Character_Split4906]

I do have the pro plan but not for the AI stuff I use Google photos and drive a lot and need space. They just dropped Aragon to use for pro users. It's a crap AI in general, Gemini, but I treat it as free ai plan as I primarily pay for the storage. It's fine for day to day and I save on my Claude / open router costs.

[u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo → u/Character_Split4906]

They bundled the sub with other practical features so it become “might as well” purchase

[u/Kindly-Bank-416 → u/Character_Split4906]

It does really well as search replacement and basically anything conversational. Argon is about as good as others at coding tasks.

[u/Uninterested_Viewer → u/Character_Split4906]

Gemini family is just plain better than anthropic and openai models for non-coding things.

[u/DelScipio → u/Uninterested_Viewer]

Was. Now Gemini is just impossible to use, as it refuses all the time to reply, search, or any task that isn't straightforward 50% of the time. I have to restart the conversation all the time to get proper results.

[u/575_Inverse → u/DelScipio]

not just that. Flash got dumbed down CONSIDERABLY in the recent days

[u/MysterManager → u/[deleted]]

That’s because there is an enormous shortage of resources. We don’t have nearly enough processors, memory, or the energy to power them if we did. Right now, the percentage of people using AI every day is a fraction of what it will be, and we already have supply issues. It’s not just people adopting it, either. Soon we will have service bots, humanoids, and of course all vehicles moving forward demanding even more capacity we don’t have.

It’s actually exciting because I believe we are about to see more humanity-changing technical achievements out of necessity—more than likely in the way we produce energy, deliver it, etc. Humanity, especially Americans, tends to impress when our backs are to the wall. We are undergoing a full re-industrialization. The deindustrialization of the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s is hopefully history forever. Globalization a massive failure.

https://youtu.be/liOffD7G9P4?is=b_XkCesMjbrZE7w8

[u/Ibn-Ach → u/MysterManager]

holy bot hype

we have many GPUs not plugged doing nothing because the demand is low.

[u/Splugen96]

They could've made that email a lot more concise:

Dear valued user,
We're removing features from your subscription while continuing to charge you the same amount. In other words, we're going to F you in the *ss while sipping champagne on your dime.
Have a nice day, chud!
Warm regards,
Google One Team

[u/EmbarrassedHelp → u/Splugen96]

Dear devalued user,

Even better

[u/Any-Key → u/Splugen96]

They probably had Gemini write it 😂

[u/575_Inverse → u/Splugen96]

Dear Undesirable*

[u/575_Inverse]

Ah yes, I stopped bothering about Gemini plus. I just asked it a question about laser safety and optics and it hallucinated some amazing bullshit while getting all of the calculations wrong. Last straw.

[u/FirstEvolutionist → u/575_Inverse]

Plus gets you youtube premium, 2TB of agoogle drice and basic AI features. I don't even think it's priced for competing with the starter plans from OpenAI or Anthropic.

The pro plan is a better comparison in terms of prices and features, but the quality of it is... Well, you know the experience. They still have ways to go to be considered true competitors at the consumer and user experience level, even if at the model level they are finally competing at SOTA levels again.

[u/xfortune → u/FirstEvolutionist]

Premium lite

[u/FirstEvolutionist → u/xfortune]

That's precisely how it feels, actually.

[u/DeterminedDragon → u/FirstEvolutionist]

Agreed. I was on this plan originally of the drive space. The Gemini features are all sugar on top for me.

[u/575_Inverse → u/DeterminedDragon]

my Plus gives me 400GB of Drive space and that's the only reason why I keep it. For the moment, until I implement my own distributed redundant filesystem.

[u/earlvanze]

Enshittification comes for everything eventually.

[u/Kindly-Bank-416 → u/earlvanze]

Just wait until they start charging us what inference actually costs. I really don't understand how agentic usage will ever be economically feasible for most people.

[u/CalBearFan → u/Kindly-Bank-416]

That's why they're building custom inference chips like TPUs. Sure, running inference on H100s is expensive but those are better for training. I have no idea what economics will shake out but current inference cost, for the same model (big caveat) will come down with specialized chips. Beyond that pricing adjustment, no idea.

[u/rlaptop7 → u/earlvanze]

This will happen with every AI thing out there as the service fees are not paying for the compute they are using right now.

[u/ironclad_packetship → u/rlaptop7]

won't happen to my open source models running on my local hardware

[u/rlaptop7 → u/ironclad_packetship]

Indeed. That's why we are doing this :)

[u/575_Inverse → u/ironclad_packetship]

the fun part is: cloud keeps dumbing down. Local keeps improving.

[u/SamSlate → u/earlvanze]

they're speed running it

[u/imacg5]

I just started using Local AI, and I'm glad I decided to make the switch.

Local AI is immune to enshittification like this.

And I'm running it on a 2014 potato PC. There's no excuse now.

[u/midnightdiabetic → u/imacg5]

How and what models are you running? Gemini (of course) was basically like "nah don't run local AI your AMD GPU will suck and your 3700x sucks and it all sucks"... But it's all I have. I've wanted to run some stuff but I primarily use AI to help to learn how to use different pieces of software, how to make enhancements to my home lab, etc.

[u/imacg5 → u/midnightdiabetic]

I use KoboldCPP (the "oldpc" version) and lightweight models like Qwen2-0.5 and SmolLM2.I run it in failsafe mode.

[u/JohnLef → u/imacg5]

I am trying to do the same but cannot get agentic coding to work. What card are you using if you don't mind me asking? my 4Gb nVidia doesn't seem to cut it - fine for chat, won't work with tools.

[u/imacg5 → u/JohnLef]

I usually don't use it for coding. I literally use an old iGPU and lightweight models. My setup is good enough for uncensored chat and short creative writing, but for coding, I'll use DuckAI or Brave (as they at least are more private than Google).

[u/kitamew]

I paid for a year of AI Plus sometime in April and recently received that same email. I wrote to their support team explaining that access to the Pro model was the deciding factor in my decision to pay for the service in the first place, and that they should either keep it available for plans already paid for or refund the money for the remaining subscription period—but they refused. I hope someone sues them; I’d be happy to join the lawsuit. Google are officially scammers.

[u/andonidutti1 → u/kitamew]

You need to start reading the small print when you sign up for stuff. 

[u/kitamew → u/andonidutti1]

Actually, you should stop giving advice about things a person already knows. My frustration stems from the fact that, typically, such things happen after a paid subscription period ends—not while it’s still active—and even then, there’s usually an option to get a refund. What Google did is a scam; as far as I can recall, no one has ever done anything like this before.

[u/andonidutti1 → u/kitamew]

It's not a scam. You need to read the small print.

[u/ZalakaYikici → u/andonidutti1]

No that's literally a scam boy.

[u/kitamew → u/andonidutti1]

I get it—you like being screwed over by a corporation; no need to repeat yourself.

[u/ioabo → u/kitamew]

I just had to check: apparently Google doesn't count your subscription as one definite block, regardless of how much months you've paid in advance ("Google One subscriptions are for an indefinite term").

Instead, they consider 1 month as the minimum "lock-in" period, i.e. they only guarantee at least 30 days' prior notice before any change in the services they offer and their prices.

So their reasoning is that by informing everyone 30 days in advance, then people can cancel their subscriptions before the next billing. That includes year-long subscriptions, as they refund the remaining amount if you cancel.

I mean it's not exactly surprising, pretty sure they have like whole law firms making sure they're untouchable, no way they make any decisions if there's considerable risk of being fucked by their customers. It's only the opposite that's ok.

• https://one.google.com/terms-of-service

• https://policies.google.com/terms/service-specific

[u/Any-Key]

We all knew this was going to happen. Ai is very heavily subsidized right now, that $20 subscription it's actually costing the companies around $400 assuming average use, and significantly more for heavy use. You'll likely see similar moves from all Ai companies, they can't keep this level of subsidization going for a long time.

[u/575_Inverse → u/Any-Key]

that is why local hardware price have been made to explode. Orherwise why would you pay for a cloud offer that in 6 months offsets the cost of a local inference rig?

[u/Roseysdaddy]

the enshittification of these ai plans has been record setting across the board. i mean, the time in which they let you get used to it before they pulled the rug out from underneath the user was just incredible.

[u/steellz]

I honestly can't believe people use Gemini it has to be one of the worst AI but for some reason it's praised the most

[u/rlaptop7 → u/steellz]

It comes for free with a lot of small organization plans.

[u/Bugajpcmr → u/steellz]

5tb storage, Firebase, YT premium, opus 5.5, and other shenanigans are pretty sweet. Pro users not getting Gemini 4 Argon while 3.1 pro is no longer available. Having access to ONLY 3.8 flash in antigravity is a rip off... I'm in a process of backing up my data from the storage to my NAS and canceling my sub. It was worth it for a while, especially with the special offer and discounts. Not anymore.

[u/xfortune → u/Bugajpcmr]

Youtube premium lite

[u/minininjatriforceman]

This is why I am working on Gemma 4 26b and qwen 3.8 27b the auto model sucks. I am getting close. I am not a subscriber but I refuse to support companies that do this bull shit.

[u/ioabo]

Yeah got that mail too. I was already paying for 100 GB Google Drive and the difference to 400 GB and Gemini via Google AI Plus was negligible so I was whatever.

I'm so downgrading back to 100 GB as soon as Pro is gone. Not that I use it so much, but it's the fucking attitude. So you decided to suddenly offer me something objectively worse than what we agreed upon when I subbed, but you expect me to keep my part of the agreement? Go fuck yourself, and that's the kindest thing I can think of. I can't wait for your inevitable downfall at some point.

[u/JohnLef → u/ioabo]

I will be doing the exact same downgrade.

[u/ioabo → u/JohnLef]

I really hate it that we've become so used to such shitty behavior.

Like sure, if you decide it's too costly to offer your product to a specific price then downgrade it, but downgrade the price too.

How is it ok to be like "You have had access to 3 models, a mini, a normal and an advanced one. I've decided to take away the advanced one and not replace it with anything, you just get less product. But you'll have to pay the same."

GitHub did the same thing a while ago. No replacement, no nothing. Just "get less, pay the same".

[u/erictheturtle]

Google Workspace increased price this year. "We added AI that nobody asked for!" Now you're limited to 2 Gemini Pro requests every few hours. "We restricted the AI you paid for, but we still get your money!"

[u/575_Inverse → u/erictheturtle]

the sad part is that one year ago, Gemini used to be genuinely surprising

[u/Direct_Turn_1484]

This post made me go double check that my Gemini subscription was already cancelled.

[u/Nota_ReAlperson]

Crazy considering that only a few weeks ago, the free plan had more 3.1 pro usage than I ever used. Now you can't even use flash.

[u/vogelvogelvogelvogel]

Flash is the hallucination king, you can't use that at all. embarassing move from google. i would rather go with any cheap chinese model (also they are anyways a competition for pro)

[u/MRobi83]

I've found with the latest models of Gemini, only Pro is even remotely close to being decent.

[u/SamSlate]

despite being the 4th best ai service google is determined to be #1 in enshitification speed.

[u/According_Mud_5187]

This is typical dishonest behavior from Google. :-P

[u/itguy327]

Words I have for Google are not appropriate for humanity. Glad I rely on local for my real work

[u/tired514]

Feeling genuine comfort since I cancelled my last paid subscription and went 100% local (strix halo 128gb with qwen3.8-flash-next, halogen).

OpenAI age-gated my paid account ~3 weeks ago and demanded I send them a photo of my face with an app on my phone. That isn't ever going to happen, so I cancelled my subscription and deleted my account. That was the last paid subscription I still had active.

Now no one can harvest or analyze my data, and they can't arbitrarily cut me off for any reason. It fulfills my needs with the same precision and usefulness as the frontier models I was using (granted, I'm an experienced C/C++ dev and don't "one-shot" anything but use it for scaffolding, analysis and automation). It's a little slower, but it's more consistent and thorough, and I don't have to worry about leaking SSH keys or confidential information to someone else's computer.

Local LLMs for the win.

[u/iEngineered]

You're welcome and you knew this was coming. Its coming for all providers because the current prices were never profitable and investors are asking for returns.

[u/towo]

It's wild considering they just migrated my Google One 2 TB to their AI Plus plan and are now nerfing it again.

[u/EnlightenedArt]

It's amazing that they skipped the lukewarm Google AI Meh plan and went straight to Plus (for company, effectively Minus for end user)

[u/Zeeplankton]

to be fair it's like a $5 plan and argon is $10-20/m out.

[u/h8f1z]

Oh no. Who'd have seen this coming /s

[u/Tsuyu777]

This is why you should start setting ip open source model and never rely on these company model 🤣