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Why has Google totally overcomplicated their subscription models? Looking at "Google AI Ultra" it looks like I get this Jules thing, Gemini App, Notebook, etc.

Why has Google totally overcomplicated their subscription models? Looking at "Google AI Ultra" it looks like I get this Jules thing, Gemini App, Notebook, etc. But if I want Gemini CLI, then I've got to go through the GCP hellscape of trying to create subscriptions, billing accounts then buying Google Code Assist or something, but then I can't get the Gemini app. Then of course, this Google AI gives me YouTube Premium for some reason (no idea how that's related to anything).

absurddoctor 1y ago
But unlike some other pieces of the Ultra subscription you can’t share YouTube premium with family. So now I have both and Google has suggested a few times that I shouldn’t be doing that.
esher 1y ago
Watch YouTube while AI is coding for you.
- weakwire 1y ago
  That’s actually great!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
gman83 1y ago
I was wondering about this too, and apparently they're working on integrating it, so the Google AI Pro/Ultra subscriptions will also give API/CLI credits or something -- https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1427 https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1427
coredog64 1y ago
> Then of course, this Google AI gives me YouTube Premium for some reason (no idea how that's related to anything). One of the common tests I've seen for the Google models specifically is understanding of YT videos: Summarization, transcription, diarization, etc. One of their APIs allows you to provide a YT video ID rather than making you responsible for downloading the content yourself.
- neuronexmachina 1y ago
  Tangentially, last week I asked Gemini's research mode to write up a strategy guide for a videogame based on a 20-episode "masterclass" youtube series. It did a surprisingly good job.
ryandvm 1y ago
And God forbid you were an early Google for Domains adopter and have your own Google Workspace account because nothing fucking works right for those poor saps.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Add "moving to a different country while owning an account that started as Google Apps for Domains" for a little more flavor. "Can't share the subscription because the other person in your family is in another country." Okay guess I'll change countr- "No you can't change your Google Workspace account's country."
  - kyleee 1y ago
    Nobody is getting a promotion for fixing that shit
    - samrus 1y ago
      Does google know this startegy just makes people less likely to sign up for their new shiny services, as the "killed by google" meme spreads more and more
      - endtime 1y ago
        I worked at Google for ten years (as an IC). Here's my personal perspective. Yes, of course, the individual employees know. But the decision making for these kinds of things is usually a full-time middle manager, who isn't deciding on behalf of Google as a whole, but on behalf of their organization within Google (could be 50 people, could be 2000). It's not just _not_ that manager's job to make the globally optimal decision for Google, it's actually likely often in direct conflict with their job, which is basically "set the priorities of your org such that they launch things that make your boss look good to his boss". Spending headcount on maintaining niche stuff is usually not that (and takes resources away from whatever is).
        1y ago
jacksnipe 1y ago
I wonder if bundling it with ai is to deal with that pesky internal issue where engineers are always trying to turn off ads for their yt accounts
- thrtythreeforty 1y ago
  Is this really a thing? That's hilarious
BlackjackCF 1y ago
The cynic in me thinks that complicated subscriptions schemes are an effective way to make people overpay for stuff.
- JonathanMerklin 1y ago
  I think it's possible that that may be an additional benefit (for Google), but to me it seems overwhelmingly more likely that the main explanation here is Conway's Law.
  - pyman 1y ago
    Google is terrible at two things: building UIs and pricing their products. Their reputation precedes them.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  I'd guess Google is just a million disconnected teams with their own products and product managers and pricing schemes, and no one thinking about the overall strategy or cohesion.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rsanheim 1y ago
Because their main business is selling ads and maintaining their stranglehold on that market via analytics, chrome, Chromebook, android, SSO via google, etc. The dev focused products are a sideshow amongst different fiefdoms at google. They will never get first billing or focus.
Lucasoato 1y ago
We’ve been trying to understand Google Workspace subscriptions but it’s a complete mess. It’s not even clear which plans include GMail and which don’t, Google used to be the simple but great company, why do you feel so stranded when subscribing to their product now? When you enter Google Cloud you end up in a shroud of darkness in which admins can’t see the projects created by users. I’m the admin for our Google Workspace, I can’t even tell if we have access to Google AI studio or not, their tutorials are complete bullshit, the docs are just plain wrong because they reference to things that are not reflected in the platform. I had to switch back to English because their automated translations are so awful, didn’t they really think to at least let one person review once each document before releasing it to the public?! It’s a 450 billion dollars company and they can’t realize that they added so many layers of confusion that 99% of their users won’t need. The biggest issue is that they won’t solve this anytime soon, they dug themselves into a limitless pit.
- codazoda 1y ago
  An old boss of mine used to say, “There’s money in confusion.”
  - emmelaich 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly Typically applied to mobile phone plans but applicable to many other markets.
  - samrus 1y ago
    Feels like a short term, low trust, reputation lag exploit. You mguht make more money from the confusion until some comes along offering a better product with a sensible billing plan and kills you because its easier for people to use. Thats my hope anyway
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    For the competitor
ygouzerh 1y ago
It looks like there are two different entities inside Google who provides AI products. From a professional context for example, we are using in my company both Google Workspaces and GCP. With Google Workspaces, we have including in our subscription Gemini, Veo 3, Jules, etc. Everything is included in a subscription models, rate-limited but unlimited. The main entrypoint is gemini.google.com However, everytime we need to use the API, then we need to use GCP. It gives us access to some more advances models like Veo3 instead of Veo3-fast, and more features. It's unlimited usage, but pay-as-you-go. The main entrypoint is GCP Vertex AI And both teams, Google Workspaces and GCP are quite separate. They often don't know really well what the others teams provides.
- snthpy 1y ago
  Thanks. That explains some things. OT question about Google Workspaces: What's the difference between My Drive, Shared Drives, and "Workspaces"? When would I want to use each in a team setup?
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    You can share things with anyone, even if you're using Google drive with a normal Gmail (non-workspace) Google account. My drive are files you created / uploaded (and thus count against your space quota) and shared is where things go that have been shared with you by others, or public drive links that you've visited. Workspace is a shared space private to the company/organization workspace group.
  - x0x0 1y ago
    my drive: files/folders are owned by a person shared drives: owned by the org; potentially locked to teams/sub-org structures inside the org The difference: suppose you're a startup and you use my drive only to save half the price of gsuite ($7 vs $14/mo). Your eng lead sets up engineering folder, etc. But that is owned by that user. If that person leaves, that folder will be archived or transferred to a designed person with access disrupted. Because it's owned by an user account, not the org.
- veonik 1y ago
navinsylvester 1y ago
I subscribed to ultra to give deep think a try but i will not extend it even a day for all the other packaging put together by someone who might be working for a competitor. Who does these things and the fragmentation is crazy as mentioned. Chinese deep agents may be entrenched(just kidding), its crazy that someone up the ladder is so off point and not worry about losing his job.
artdigital 1y ago
You're forgetting the 'Google Developer Premium' subscription ($300/y) which also bundles Gemini Code Assist / CLI, some Vertex credits, but none of the other Gemini things One can make an argument that other Gemini stuff shouldn't be in there because it's not dev related, but Jules at least should
- turblety 1y ago
  Oh gees another subscription. This Google Developer Premium does look closer to something I would pay for, but really I just want something that gives me everything in a single subscription, that I can use. Like Claude, OpenAI or most other services on the planet.
  - artdigital 1y ago
    Yeah agree. I currently don't subscribe to any of the Gemini things because I'm too much in the Claude ecosystem and can't justify another sub. But if I were to subscribe to something, it would be the Google Developer Premium plan. Mostly for Gemini CLI, but that alone is currently still way too rate-limited and not worth it. Maybe if they add Jules and some version of Gemini to it (without the Gdrive storage and YT premium stuff), I would get onto it. Having Jules in the normal consumer Gemini subscription makes no sense. It's very clearly a dev product, so it should be bundled with other dev products, so through GCP with Code Assist or Google Developer Premium. It feels completely out of places in the list of features on https://one.google.com/ai https://one.google.com/ai
zoba 1y ago
They block me from subscribing because I have a custom domain for my personal email. I’d gladly give them money but they say “Sign up with your personal email” when I try to subscribe. Such poor design
slightwinder 1y ago
At this point, I'm not sure whether Google is just full of people trolling the world, or people so smart and unworldly that they are trolling themselves. The website for Jules has a section for plans, yet it's neither mention the price, nor which actual plan they are talking about or where I can find those f**ing plans, not even a link. This is just ridiculous. Has Google already replaced all their people with AI?
discordance 1y ago
I think you're holding it wrong. I installed Gemini CLI today, went to AI studio, got a free Gemini 2.5 Pro API key (without setting up billing or a credit card) and auth'd with Gemini CLI using the key. Took like 30 seconds. Unfortunately the results were much poorer than what I've been getting with Claude Code.

absurddoctor 1y ago

But unlike some other pieces of the Ultra subscription you can’t share YouTube premium with family. So now I have both and Google has suggested a few times that I shouldn’t be doing that.

esher 1y ago

Watch YouTube while AI is coding for you.

weakwire 1y ago
That’s actually great!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

gman83 1y ago

I was wondering about this too, and apparently they're working on integrating it, so the Google AI Pro/Ultra subscriptions will also give API/CLI credits or something -- https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1427 https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1427

coredog64 1y ago

> Then of course, this Google AI gives me YouTube Premium for some reason (no idea how that's related to anything). One of the common tests I've seen for the Google models specifically is understanding of YT videos: Summarization, transcription, diarization, etc. One of their APIs allows you to provide a YT video ID rather than making you responsible for downloading the content yourself.

neuronexmachina 1y ago
Tangentially, last week I asked Gemini's research mode to write up a strategy guide for a videogame based on a 20-episode "masterclass" youtube series. It did a surprisingly good job.

ryandvm 1y ago

And God forbid you were an early Google for Domains adopter and have your own Google Workspace account because nothing fucking works right for those poor saps.

rkomorn 1y ago
Add "moving to a different country while owning an account that started as Google Apps for Domains" for a little more flavor. "Can't share the subscription because the other person in your family is in another country." Okay guess I'll change countr- "No you can't change your Google Workspace account's country."
- kyleee 1y ago
  Nobody is getting a promotion for fixing that shit
  - samrus 1y ago
    Does google know this startegy just makes people less likely to sign up for their new shiny services, as the "killed by google" meme spreads more and more
    - endtime 1y ago
      I worked at Google for ten years (as an IC). Here's my personal perspective. Yes, of course, the individual employees know. But the decision making for these kinds of things is usually a full-time middle manager, who isn't deciding on behalf of Google as a whole, but on behalf of their organization within Google (could be 50 people, could be 2000). It's not just _not_ that manager's job to make the globally optimal decision for Google, it's actually likely often in direct conflict with their job, which is basically "set the priorities of your org such that they launch things that make your boss look good to his boss". Spending headcount on maintaining niche stuff is usually not that (and takes resources away from whatever is).
      - 1y ago

jacksnipe 1y ago

I wonder if bundling it with ai is to deal with that pesky internal issue where engineers are always trying to turn off ads for their yt accounts

thrtythreeforty 1y ago
Is this really a thing? That's hilarious

BlackjackCF 1y ago

The cynic in me thinks that complicated subscriptions schemes are an effective way to make people overpay for stuff.

JonathanMerklin 1y ago
I think it's possible that that may be an additional benefit (for Google), but to me it seems overwhelmingly more likely that the main explanation here is Conway's Law.
- pyman 1y ago
  Google is terrible at two things: building UIs and pricing their products. Their reputation precedes them.
SchemaLoad 1y ago
I'd guess Google is just a million disconnected teams with their own products and product managers and pricing schemes, and no one thinking about the overall strategy or cohesion.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rsanheim 1y ago

Because their main business is selling ads and maintaining their stranglehold on that market via analytics, chrome, Chromebook, android, SSO via google, etc. The dev focused products are a sideshow amongst different fiefdoms at google. They will never get first billing or focus.

Lucasoato 1y ago

We’ve been trying to understand Google Workspace subscriptions but it’s a complete mess. It’s not even clear which plans include GMail and which don’t, Google used to be the simple but great company, why do you feel so stranded when subscribing to their product now? When you enter Google Cloud you end up in a shroud of darkness in which admins can’t see the projects created by users. I’m the admin for our Google Workspace, I can’t even tell if we have access to Google AI studio or not, their tutorials are complete bullshit, the docs are just plain wrong because they reference to things that are not reflected in the platform. I had to switch back to English because their automated translations are so awful, didn’t they really think to at least let one person review once each document before releasing it to the public?! It’s a 450 billion dollars company and they can’t realize that they added so many layers of confusion that 99% of their users won’t need. The biggest issue is that they won’t solve this anytime soon, they dug themselves into a limitless pit.

codazoda 1y ago
An old boss of mine used to say, “There’s money in confusion.”
- emmelaich 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly Typically applied to mobile phone plans but applicable to many other markets.
- samrus 1y ago
  Feels like a short term, low trust, reputation lag exploit. You mguht make more money from the confusion until some comes along offering a better product with a sensible billing plan and kills you because its easier for people to use. Thats my hope anyway
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  For the competitor

ygouzerh 1y ago

It looks like there are two different entities inside Google who provides AI products. From a professional context for example, we are using in my company both Google Workspaces and GCP. With Google Workspaces, we have including in our subscription Gemini, Veo 3, Jules, etc. Everything is included in a subscription models, rate-limited but unlimited. The main entrypoint is gemini.google.com However, everytime we need to use the API, then we need to use GCP. It gives us access to some more advances models like Veo3 instead of Veo3-fast, and more features. It's unlimited usage, but pay-as-you-go. The main entrypoint is GCP Vertex AI And both teams, Google Workspaces and GCP are quite separate. They often don't know really well what the others teams provides.

snthpy 1y ago
Thanks. That explains some things. OT question about Google Workspaces: What's the difference between My Drive, Shared Drives, and "Workspaces"? When would I want to use each in a team setup?
- zdragnar 1y ago
  You can share things with anyone, even if you're using Google drive with a normal Gmail (non-workspace) Google account. My drive are files you created / uploaded (and thus count against your space quota) and shared is where things go that have been shared with you by others, or public drive links that you've visited. Workspace is a shared space private to the company/organization workspace group.
- x0x0 1y ago
  my drive: files/folders are owned by a person shared drives: owned by the org; potentially locked to teams/sub-org structures inside the org The difference: suppose you're a startup and you use my drive only to save half the price of gsuite ($7 vs $14/mo). Your eng lead sets up engineering folder, etc. But that is owned by that user. If that person leaves, that folder will be archived or transferred to a designed person with access disrupted. Because it's owned by an user account, not the org.
veonik 1y ago

navinsylvester 1y ago

I subscribed to ultra to give deep think a try but i will not extend it even a day for all the other packaging put together by someone who might be working for a competitor. Who does these things and the fragmentation is crazy as mentioned. Chinese deep agents may be entrenched(just kidding), its crazy that someone up the ladder is so off point and not worry about losing his job.

artdigital 1y ago

You're forgetting the 'Google Developer Premium' subscription ($300/y) which also bundles Gemini Code Assist / CLI, some Vertex credits, but none of the other Gemini things One can make an argument that other Gemini stuff shouldn't be in there because it's not dev related, but Jules at least should

turblety 1y ago
Oh gees another subscription. This Google Developer Premium does look closer to something I would pay for, but really I just want something that gives me everything in a single subscription, that I can use. Like Claude, OpenAI or most other services on the planet.
- artdigital 1y ago
  Yeah agree. I currently don't subscribe to any of the Gemini things because I'm too much in the Claude ecosystem and can't justify another sub. But if I were to subscribe to something, it would be the Google Developer Premium plan. Mostly for Gemini CLI, but that alone is currently still way too rate-limited and not worth it. Maybe if they add Jules and some version of Gemini to it (without the Gdrive storage and YT premium stuff), I would get onto it. Having Jules in the normal consumer Gemini subscription makes no sense. It's very clearly a dev product, so it should be bundled with other dev products, so through GCP with Code Assist or Google Developer Premium. It feels completely out of places in the list of features on https://one.google.com/ai https://one.google.com/ai

zoba 1y ago

They block me from subscribing because I have a custom domain for my personal email. I’d gladly give them money but they say “Sign up with your personal email” when I try to subscribe. Such poor design

slightwinder 1y ago

At this point, I'm not sure whether Google is just full of people trolling the world, or people so smart and unworldly that they are trolling themselves. The website for Jules has a section for plans, yet it's neither mention the price, nor which actual plan they are talking about or where I can find those f**ing plans, not even a link. This is just ridiculous. Has Google already replaced all their people with AI?

discordance 1y ago

I think you're holding it wrong. I installed Gemini CLI today, went to AI studio, got a free Gemini 2.5 Pro API key (without setting up billing or a credit card) and auth'd with Gemini CLI using the key. Took like 30 seconds. Unfortunately the results were much poorer than what I've been getting with Claude Code.