6 ms·

"Unlock Gemini Advanced for a year on us ($239 value)" Who thinks they are booking phone sales as AI revenue to juice the numbers?

HumblyTossed 2y ago
Probably. And we're probably going to see more of that later with other companies.
renewiltord 2y ago
It’s total trash AI. I keep forgetting to unsubscribe. Can’t do anything.
- singhrac 2y ago
  I mostly agree, but partially because I can't tell (even though I'm paying $20/month) what tier of Gemini I am getting. I know most people won't care, but because they won't tell me, I will assume I'm getting Gemini Flash from 6 months ago, and I'm not paying $20/month for that. I'm sure if they were honest about the model people wouldn't pay for it. They're making the mistake of optimizing for general case users (who don't care about model version) when they need to attract power users so that they can find product-market fit.
  - lagniappe 2y ago
    20 bucks a month for Gemini is bonkers.
    - dudus 2y ago
      The 20 bucks a month is actually for 2TB of storage. Gemini advanced is just a plus. https://one.google.com/about/plans https://one.google.com/about/plans
      - jsheard 2y ago
        There's a vanilla 2TB plan for $10/month, the plan with 2TB and Gemini is $20/month. You could say that Gemini is $10/month then, but if you don't actually need 2TB or the other benefits then you're effectively paying $20/month because you can't unbundle Gemini from everything else.
        singhrac 2y ago
        Wait, where's this $10/month plan? I don't see it. I see it at https://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about, but I can't actually choose that. Edit: I found the answer on Reddit, as usual. You need to go to your plan settings and only then is the plan available under one.google.com/settings. That's the only way to downgrade.
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        when an important fact like this is added to a subthread, i wish all the thread participants would come back and edit their comments to reflect it
    - bergie 2y ago
      12€ per month here. 10€/month for the regular 2TB Google One plan, 22€/month for the same but with a chatbot. I wonder who falls for that.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    I have Gemini Advanced but I can't tell which model it is, yeah. Same problem. Whatever it is, it's useless. GPT-2 level. Can't do anything reasonable. Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT-4o are roughly the same with the former pipping it for me and then out there is this shitty Google product that is worse than Llama-3 running on my own laptop. Even Llama-3 is better at remembering what's going on. Fortunately, this time I managed to look it up and I have it for free because I have Google One 5TB, apparently. And there's no way to spend more money so that's what I have. It's so bad that when Claude and ChatGPT run out of messages for me I just use local Llama rather than use Gemini. Atrocious product.
    - mda 2y ago
      "it's useless. GPT-2 level" Really? In my experience they are at similar level for most tasks.
      - renewiltord 2y ago
        Yeah, in practice, for the tasks I set it. High hallucination rate. Low context window. Frequently refuses to act and suggests Googling. If the other guys didn't exist, it could be useful, but as it stands it's as useful as GPT-2 because neither of them hit the threshold of usefulness. I'm sure some benchmarks are decent but when Google finally shutters the chatbot I'll be glad because then I won't constantly be wondering if I'm paying for it. It's a shame because Google's AI features otherwise are incredible. Google Photos has fantastic facial recognition, and I can search it with descriptions of photos and it finds them. Their keyboard is pretty good. But Gemini Advanced is better off not existing. If it's the same team, I suppose they can't keep making hits. If it's a different team, then they're two orders of magnitude less capable.
        rvnx 2y ago
        I used Gemini Pro API to sort my folders, and it misclassified some files, I asked why, and he said it was done to "promote diversity in my folders" ... This is very lame (and the sad part is that it's a real story).
- varispeed 2y ago
  How do you know if you are paying for it? I signed up, but I have no idea if I am being charged for it. Hope not.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Bottom left. Settings > Manage Subscription. It turns out I have it included till the end of the year because of the 5TB Google One sub https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237943
    - nomel 2y ago
      The absolute confusion/pain in subscribing and unsubscribing is why I'll never consider a Google AI service in the future.
      - lwhi 2y ago
        So true. It feels like Google's marketing has gone full dark side. And it's lazy marketing. Nothing feels genuinely positive for the consumer. It's depressing.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  In the Google Pixel 2024 Keynote, one of the presenters, Dave Citron, had to try three times to get Gemini to perform the preapproved, practiced demonstration task - 33.3% success rate for something that Google KNOWS will work. see https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=1692 https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=1692
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    At https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=4119 https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=4119 in the Google Pixel 2024 keynote, the generative AI in Magic Editor still produces wacky objects - a hot air balloon that looks deflated?! The gen AI did produce two decent-looking hot air balloons.
  - 015a 2y ago
    Most of the demo fails they had during today's keynote felt more like beta supporting software and bad network kinds of failures. The only failure I saw that felt more like a generative AI-level failure was one of the hot air balloon image gens they tried which generated a circle of garbage in the sky; which was one variation presented among five or six which the AI spat out in seconds.
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    at this stage, I'd be happy with google assistant "only" understanding what I'd like to play on youtube (+music) while driving. Far-fetched dream would be to understand streets I'd like to navigate to via google maps (not US, not english). Barrier is so low compared to rest.
    - canucker2016 2y ago
      UX-wise, I'm not sure why everyone is so keen on voice commands for AI. Why let everyone in earshot know what you're up to? Sure, it's easier than typing all that text given crappy feedback of these smartphone onscreen keyboards. If you show a pic to Google Lens app, the app will proceed to identify text and highlight those text passages. In the AI-verse, Lens could detect the concert tour. - if the tour was in the past, Lens could look up in Photos any media with GPS locations at those concert locations/dates and show them. - if the tour is now/in the future, Lens could detect the dates and locations, and look up in your calendar to find when you are available. If you are available when the tour comes to your town, Lens would show a big green checkmark next to that date/location pair or highlight that date/location. Otherwise, it goes into search mode and crosses out dates/location when you aren't available. For out-of-town locations when you are available, Lens could start up Maps to search for flights to those locations. Perhaps a search of your contacts to see if you have friends/relatives in/near those out-of-town locations. or look in your calendar to see if you've been to any of those out-of-town locations before, etc. etc. That'd impress me.
jgalt212 2y ago
and are they booking AI search as cloud revenue?
- eitally 2y ago
  No, absolutely not. The only part of this that would be Cloud revenue would be model usage exposed via Vertex.
  - jgalt212 2y ago
    That's what I meant. Google search expenses become Google cloud revenues.
petre 2y ago
Phone with scuba glasses and the woke AI. In fact it looks like Bender from Futurama, only with a nondescript personality. Thanx but no. No need for an AI to lecture me or avoid questions because it thinks it might remotely offend a hypothetic alien civilization. Can't stand the iPhone either. At least it has a good camera and audio, but most of the apps are either junk or you have to pay for Apple rent seeking. A lot of shady Chinese apps. I spent hours trying to find a decent calculator like the stock one on Android. And the on screen keyboard is outright annoying. Couldn't turn off haptics either. So I'm still using my Pixel 4a until it dies. The iPhone is garthering dust on my nightstand.
panarky 2y ago
Since there's no public reporting of AI revenue, what would be the point of artificially inflating it?
- LegitShady 2y ago
  Internal KPIs
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  Some VP of AI wants to become an SVP? And some marketing director on phones wants a "SAVE $250" sticker on all the new phones and is happy to play along?
  - HL33tibCe7 2y ago
    No, the CEO wants to present progress in "AI" (TM) growth within the company to shareholders

HumblyTossed 2y ago

Probably. And we're probably going to see more of that later with other companies.

renewiltord 2y ago

It’s total trash AI. I keep forgetting to unsubscribe. Can’t do anything.

singhrac 2y ago
I mostly agree, but partially because I can't tell (even though I'm paying $20/month) what tier of Gemini I am getting. I know most people won't care, but because they won't tell me, I will assume I'm getting Gemini Flash from 6 months ago, and I'm not paying $20/month for that. I'm sure if they were honest about the model people wouldn't pay for it. They're making the mistake of optimizing for general case users (who don't care about model version) when they need to attract power users so that they can find product-market fit.
- lagniappe 2y ago
  20 bucks a month for Gemini is bonkers.
  - dudus 2y ago
    The 20 bucks a month is actually for 2TB of storage. Gemini advanced is just a plus. https://one.google.com/about/plans https://one.google.com/about/plans
    - jsheard 2y ago
      There's a vanilla 2TB plan for $10/month, the plan with 2TB and Gemini is $20/month. You could say that Gemini is $10/month then, but if you don't actually need 2TB or the other benefits then you're effectively paying $20/month because you can't unbundle Gemini from everything else.
      - singhrac 2y ago
        Wait, where's this $10/month plan? I don't see it. I see it at https://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about, but I can't actually choose that. Edit: I found the answer on Reddit, as usual. You need to go to your plan settings and only then is the plan available under one.google.com/settings. That's the only way to downgrade.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      when an important fact like this is added to a subthread, i wish all the thread participants would come back and edit their comments to reflect it
  - bergie 2y ago
    12€ per month here. 10€/month for the regular 2TB Google One plan, 22€/month for the same but with a chatbot. I wonder who falls for that.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  I have Gemini Advanced but I can't tell which model it is, yeah. Same problem. Whatever it is, it's useless. GPT-2 level. Can't do anything reasonable. Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT-4o are roughly the same with the former pipping it for me and then out there is this shitty Google product that is worse than Llama-3 running on my own laptop. Even Llama-3 is better at remembering what's going on. Fortunately, this time I managed to look it up and I have it for free because I have Google One 5TB, apparently. And there's no way to spend more money so that's what I have. It's so bad that when Claude and ChatGPT run out of messages for me I just use local Llama rather than use Gemini. Atrocious product.
  - mda 2y ago
    "it's useless. GPT-2 level" Really? In my experience they are at similar level for most tasks.
    - renewiltord 2y ago
      Yeah, in practice, for the tasks I set it. High hallucination rate. Low context window. Frequently refuses to act and suggests Googling. If the other guys didn't exist, it could be useful, but as it stands it's as useful as GPT-2 because neither of them hit the threshold of usefulness. I'm sure some benchmarks are decent but when Google finally shutters the chatbot I'll be glad because then I won't constantly be wondering if I'm paying for it. It's a shame because Google's AI features otherwise are incredible. Google Photos has fantastic facial recognition, and I can search it with descriptions of photos and it finds them. Their keyboard is pretty good. But Gemini Advanced is better off not existing. If it's the same team, I suppose they can't keep making hits. If it's a different team, then they're two orders of magnitude less capable.
      - rvnx 2y ago
        I used Gemini Pro API to sort my folders, and it misclassified some files, I asked why, and he said it was done to "promote diversity in my folders" ... This is very lame (and the sad part is that it's a real story).
varispeed 2y ago
How do you know if you are paying for it? I signed up, but I have no idea if I am being charged for it. Hope not.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Bottom left. Settings > Manage Subscription. It turns out I have it included till the end of the year because of the 5TB Google One sub https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237943
  - nomel 2y ago
    The absolute confusion/pain in subscribing and unsubscribing is why I'll never consider a Google AI service in the future.
    - lwhi 2y ago
      So true. It feels like Google's marketing has gone full dark side. And it's lazy marketing. Nothing feels genuinely positive for the consumer. It's depressing.
canucker2016 2y ago
In the Google Pixel 2024 Keynote, one of the presenters, Dave Citron, had to try three times to get Gemini to perform the preapproved, practiced demonstration task - 33.3% success rate for something that Google KNOWS will work. see https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=1692 https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=1692
- canucker2016 2y ago
  At https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=4119 https://www.youtube.com/live/N_y2tP9of8A?t=4119 in the Google Pixel 2024 keynote, the generative AI in Magic Editor still produces wacky objects - a hot air balloon that looks deflated?! The gen AI did produce two decent-looking hot air balloons.
- 015a 2y ago
  Most of the demo fails they had during today's keynote felt more like beta supporting software and bad network kinds of failures. The only failure I saw that felt more like a generative AI-level failure was one of the hot air balloon image gens they tried which generated a circle of garbage in the sky; which was one variation presented among five or six which the AI spat out in seconds.
- Keyframe 2y ago
  at this stage, I'd be happy with google assistant "only" understanding what I'd like to play on youtube (+music) while driving. Far-fetched dream would be to understand streets I'd like to navigate to via google maps (not US, not english). Barrier is so low compared to rest.
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    UX-wise, I'm not sure why everyone is so keen on voice commands for AI. Why let everyone in earshot know what you're up to? Sure, it's easier than typing all that text given crappy feedback of these smartphone onscreen keyboards. If you show a pic to Google Lens app, the app will proceed to identify text and highlight those text passages. In the AI-verse, Lens could detect the concert tour. - if the tour was in the past, Lens could look up in Photos any media with GPS locations at those concert locations/dates and show them. - if the tour is now/in the future, Lens could detect the dates and locations, and look up in your calendar to find when you are available. If you are available when the tour comes to your town, Lens would show a big green checkmark next to that date/location pair or highlight that date/location. Otherwise, it goes into search mode and crosses out dates/location when you aren't available. For out-of-town locations when you are available, Lens could start up Maps to search for flights to those locations. Perhaps a search of your contacts to see if you have friends/relatives in/near those out-of-town locations. or look in your calendar to see if you've been to any of those out-of-town locations before, etc. etc. That'd impress me.

jgalt212 2y ago

and are they booking AI search as cloud revenue?

eitally 2y ago
No, absolutely not. The only part of this that would be Cloud revenue would be model usage exposed via Vertex.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  That's what I meant. Google search expenses become Google cloud revenues.

petre 2y ago

Phone with scuba glasses and the woke AI. In fact it looks like Bender from Futurama, only with a nondescript personality. Thanx but no. No need for an AI to lecture me or avoid questions because it thinks it might remotely offend a hypothetic alien civilization. Can't stand the iPhone either. At least it has a good camera and audio, but most of the apps are either junk or you have to pay for Apple rent seeking. A lot of shady Chinese apps. I spent hours trying to find a decent calculator like the stock one on Android. And the on screen keyboard is outright annoying. Couldn't turn off haptics either. So I'm still using my Pixel 4a until it dies. The iPhone is garthering dust on my nightstand.

panarky 2y ago

Since there's no public reporting of AI revenue, what would be the point of artificially inflating it?

LegitShady 2y ago
Internal KPIs
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
Some VP of AI wants to become an SVP? And some marketing director on phones wants a "SAVE $250" sticker on all the new phones and is happy to play along?
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago
  No, the CEO wants to present progress in "AI" (TM) growth within the company to shareholders