At this point if a Google PM handed me $100 and said "go figure out how to issue a prompt to Gemini 4 Argon" I'm only ~30% sure I could figure out how. The Gemini app in my phone only has 3.8 Pro as the latest model; it does say "Ultra" in the bottom left, but I really don't think I'm on the Ultra plan. How I would sign up for that, on a Workspace account, is beyond our brightest minds.

Its sad watching them try to keep up when they want nothing more than to crumble under the weight of their own bureaucracy, and at this point I'm not sure there's any hope for them.

This model is not for you or me. This model is for Google AI engineers to put on their perf review at the end of the year. How you find or not find it, it doesn't matter. It goes into the "designed and developed Gemini 4 Carbon Ultra Pro" paragraph and people get a promotion, get to keep their jobs and hope to not get replaced by Gemini 4 Carbon next year.

Model selector at the top drops down and shows

* 3.5 Flash-Lite

* 3.8 Flash

* 3.1 Pro

* 4 Argon - New

And honestly, the versions are hurting their case. I ask myself “how is the oldest model, the Pro model?”

This kind of bungled naming and versioning is the kind of thing I expect from Microsoft.

I remember a year ago and a bit ago trying to get an api key for some Gemini ~3 model. I probably spent an hour trying to find how to get a key in AI Studio. Finally figure it out and got a key.

I needed batch mode. Oh but the key from service X doesn't support batch mode, you need to go service Y and btw there is no UI for that so you need to use an SDK or API (cant even remember anymore). Spend an hour figuring that out, then it turns out I can't use batch mode because I don't have permissions. Have boss spend an hour granting me permissions. Then service is unavailable every n requests for 5 minutes, so I have fuck with exponential back offs.

Glad to see they moved that experience to their consumer offerings lol.

It's at least not worse than Microsoft. Go and start a chat with Copilot. Which one? I don't know, they are all the same. Or maybe they are all different? All I know that if you start a chat in one interface, there is close to a 0% chance (but not quite) that you will find the same chat in another interface.

I had Claude write me a script to probe all the GCP Vertex models. I can say with confidence that I know how to call Argon, because Claude told me how, I did it, saw it was modestly better than Flash for my use case and I decided it wasn't worth the money right now, for this use case.

I'm fairly confident I can't call Carbon, and I am okay with that.

the charitable explanation is that they derive the most important revenue in this area from enterprise. And enterprises are not allergic to horrible product experiences and upsells.

The more likely explanation (even if the above is technically true) is that Google is not good at cohesive product experiences.

There's no 3.8 Pro. However, there's a 3.8 Flash that's only available with Pro or Ultra subscription.

I too could not figure it out. Also a shame the Vertex API format is sorta different to OpenAI's, which everyone but Anthropic uses. The sanest way to use Google AI models is via OpenRouter tbh.

I just spent 10m trying to use this.

It is the most awful product experience I’ve had this year. How could they fuck it up this badly?

Unironically it's easier through third parties. Cursor has had Argon available, but in our enterprise we cannot get argon from the gemini subscription because they have some weird license split going on.

I’m with you on this. I tried to get Argon access for our org and failed. gave up. moved on. Still just 3.8 in the dropdown for us.. Thinking its just in so Ai studio app or something and not in gemini app?

I thought Gemini 4 Argon is still not publicly released.

All I see is 3.1 pro and 3.6 flash, I just canceled the sub lol - those seem like half a year old and I'm too lazy to check - my workplace gives me access to all models in a harness anyways

I tend to wait until it shows up in Google AI Studio. That is there web interface at least, no idea for mobile.

I think it's intentional for balancing a demand profile rather than spiking their massive user base onto a new model all at once

I don't even read Google's release notes anymore. What's the point? The models are never available.

Now, I just go straight to the Hacker News comments. I've given up on trying to figure out how to navigate Google's labyrinth.

Their release notes have become like breakthroughs in graphene. I'll believe it when I see it.

Their go-to-market execution is just so broken.

At the beginning of this whole AI shift, when Google would announce a new model, I would try to get access, even paying for a subscription.

Then I realized it's just not possible.

Google onboarding is the new Gordian knot.

For Google, I think the announcement is the success criteria. And onboarding is somebody else's problem. And the problem is... that somebody doesn't work at Google, or are entirely disempowered.

If, someday, Hacker News comments indicate that a majority of individuals have figured out how to access these newly announced models consistently, I might take my precious personal time to navigate the labyrinth once more.