Agreed. I really wish Google would get their act together because I think they have the potential of being faster, cheaper with bigger context windows. They're so great at hardcore science and engineering, but they absolutely suck at products.

Google can do anything but get their act together.

I think this is being downvoted coz it doesn't seem to be really responding to the thread, and maybe it isn't, but for anyone who hasn't tried Gemini CLI:

My experience after a month or so of heavy use is exactly this. The AI is rock solid. I'm pretty consistently impressed with its ability to derive insights from the code, when it works. But the client is flaky, the backend is flaky, and the overall experience for me is always "I wish I could just use Claude".

Say 1 in 10 queries craps out (often the client OOMs even though I have 192Gb of RAM). Sounds like a 10% reliability issue but actually it just pushes me into "fuck this I'll just do it myself" so it knocks out like 50% of the value of the product.

(Still, I wouldn't be surprised if this can be fixed over the next few months, it could easily be very competitive IMO).

I really do not want Google to win anything. They're a giant monopoly across multiple industries. We need a greater balance of power.

Antitrust enforcement has been letting us down for over two decades. If we don't have an oxygenation event, we'll go an entire generation where we only reward tax-collecting, non-innovation capital. That's unhealthy and unfair.

Our career sector has been institutionalized and rewards the 0.001% even as they rest on their laurels and conspire to suppress wages and innovation. There's a reason why centicorns petered out and why the F500 is tech-heavy. It's because big tech is a dragnet that consumes everything it touches - film studios, grocery stores, and God only knows what else it'll assimilate in the unending search for unregulated, cancerous growth.

FAANG's $500k TC is at the expense of hundreds of unicorns making their ICs even wealthier. That money mostly winds up going to institutional investors, where the money sits parked instead of flowing into huge stakes risks and cutthroat competition. That's why a16z and YC want to see increased antitrust regulations.

But it's really bad for consumers too. It's why our smartphones are stagnant taxation banana republics with one of two landlords. Nothing new, yet as tightly controlled an authoritarian state. New ideas can't be tried and can't attain healthy margins.

It's wild that you can own a trademark, but the only way for a consumer to access it is to use a Google browser that defaults to Google search (URLs are scary), where the search results will be gamed by competitors. You can't even own your own brand anymore.

Winning shouldn't be easy. It should be hard. A neverending struggle that rewards consumers.

We need a forest fire to renew the ecosystem.