I’m usually client side dev, and am an ex googler and very curious how this happened.

I can somewhat follow this line of thinking, it’s pretty intentional and clear what you’re doing when you flip on APIs in the Google cloud site.

But I can’t wrap my mind around what is an API key. All the Google cloud stuff I’ve done the last couple years involves a lot of security stuff and permissions (namely, using Gemini, of all things. The irony…).

Somewhat infamously, there’s a separate Gemini API specifically to get the easy API key based experience. I don’t understand how the concept of an easy API key leaked into Google Cloud, especially if it is coupled to Gemini access. Why not use that to make the easy dev experience? This must be some sort of overlooked fuckup. You’d either ship this and API keys for Gemini, or neither. Doing it and not using it for an easier dev experience is a head scratcher.

They started off behind, and have been scrambling to catch up. This means they didn't get the extra year of design-doc hell before shipping, so mistakes were made.