6 ms·

How does anyone internally at Google justify these decisions? Even if there are competing implementations, in terms of brand recognition, I feel like “Gemini”

How does anyone internally at Google justify these decisions? Even if there are competing implementations, in terms of brand recognition, I feel like “Gemini” is more closely associated with Google than “Antigravity”. Why pick the more obscure option?! Perhaps they felt the sentiment on Gemini CLI was beyond repair, but surely there must be some voice on the inside saying “developers will never adopt our products if we keep killing them”.

seviu 5mo ago
In those rare occasion when I want to use Gemini I just type gemini on my terminal. Gemini was on life support on my side. I barely get to use it due to its subpar performance in coding, which is to be honest the only use I have of it. And now I read that they spent 4 to 5 months testing 3.5 internally. Let that sink in. By the time they release the world has moved on. I don’t know who makes decisions at Google regarding AI but it saddens me to see this happening. Google should be up there leading but they are lagging against everybody. How can I justify dropping 100$ per month, for a coding agent that is half a year behind, knowing that Codex or Kimi is going to do much better? Stock might be ripping but that’s about it.
- popcorncowboy 5mo ago
  On the other hand I quietly cheer every time they fumble even slightly, in their seemingly inexorable march to becoming our ultimate, terrifying, corporate overlords.
  - pimeys 5mo ago
    Yes. Every possible pain they have makes me happy when their other hand is slowly destroying Android. Let them suffer.
- kreelman 5mo ago
  I get what you're saying about Gemini for coding and it's useful that you mention it. I wonder though if Google isn't so worried about the viability of their coding AIs and have a longer term view than simply providing coding aids. This might also be indicated by their recent $40B investment in Anthropic, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40-billion-in-anthropic-as-search-giant-spreads-its-ai-bets.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40-bi... ...Only time will tell!
  - Glohrischi 5mo ago
    I think google has another 'problem': Gemini needs to do a lot more than claude. They use Gemini for personal assistent to all of their Gmail and co users/customers. They have Google Docs, they have GCP were gemini should support you too. They also have a lot more languages to support too. They optimize Gemini for A LOT more than 'just' coding. So its probably a balance act for them. And because they are that rich and have no issues on compute and brain, they can play the long game easily. If they push their tpu further and continue their build out, they will be able to start training high quality topic optimized models in parallel while everyone else needs the same amount to just train one main model.
    - amunozo 5mo ago
      What is preventing them from making a coding dedicated model if that's the issue?
      - Mond_ 5mo ago
        Strategic vision. The common sentiment is that you didn't really want to do that. You expect higher returns from only having a single base model.
jstummbillig 5mo ago
I would wager your feelings conflict with their analysis (which they are probably quite good at, with all that practice)
- crakhamster01 5mo ago
  > I would wager your feelings conflict with their analysis How their target audience feels isn’t separate from “analysis” - it’s the input.
- cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
  As someone who worked there for a decade, I would wager instead that all that analysis at the top makes no difference when you're unable to execute because your internal politics are broken. EDIT: ... also that the analysis at the "top" is mostly being made by people with the wrong incentives and motives, too.
blitzar 5mo ago
I disagree; gemini is their ai model brand, antigravity is their code harness. Its much better branding than calling every single product "Co-Pilot (tm)".
- ethbr1 5mo ago
  Ah, so Gemini is the new Watson.
  - blitzar 5mo ago
    Gemini Inside (tm)
- dbbk 5mo ago
  Yes it'd be like if Claude Code was actually called Opus
  - dzikimarian 5mo ago
    Except they have Flash & Pro labels too for another level of complexity
hydra-f 5mo ago
By unifying the billing and quota systems, as well as providing better integration, I presume The Antigravity harness is by far better than the gemini-cli one. Antigravity also offers models other than Gemini as well. When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model It's great that gemini-cli is open-source, but that also comes with a bunch of ai-generated issues and pull-requests, which is sure to impede development
- crakhamster01 5mo ago
  > Antigravity also offers models other than Gemini as well. When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model. I the other reasons you mentioned could be solved while keeping the Gemini name, but this is a fair point. I didn't realize they offered 3rd party models! > When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model Yea I guess if their goal long-term is to be something more akin to Cursor that makes sense, but Anthropic seems to be doing just fine using "Claude" in their naming scheme.
- tauntz 5mo ago
  > When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform Absolutely not? When you say "Antigravity" then the first thing that comes to mind is "yet another IDE" and I have no desire in switching my IDE.
  - decimalenough 5mo ago
    It's not an IDE, it's a way to run agents. In particular, the Antigravity CLI positioned as Gemini CLI's successor is a shell with superpowers, not something you would use for code development.
    - tomrod 5mo ago
      You proved the point. Gemini has been marketed better, such that even folks in the know confuse Antigravity (the IDE) with anything else attempting to be pushed.
egorfine 5mo ago
> developers will never adopt our products if we keep killing them We all want this to be the case but it's never the case. It never stops to amuse me how developers of the world fall into the Google trap again and again and again despite knowing better. Personally have been hurt a lot by the abandonment of Polymer and since then it would not occur to me to touch any Google development product because what's the point really?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
skywhopper 5mo ago
Internal political wrangling and competition along with poor top-level leadership explain these sorts of bumbling moves. The same story that has always been at Google.
aleksiy123 5mo ago
I saw someone in a different thread describe Google product/tool strategy as a: “monkey knife fight” And tbh I can’t really argue with that.
- throwaway894345 5mo ago
  Reminds me of the Microsoft days circa 2010 when Microsoft published half a dozen media players (Zune!), word processors, email clients, etc.
  - opsnooperfax 5mo ago
    I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80% or higher, so you can plow all that extra money into superfluous headcount tasked with objectives of questionable business value. It’s a curse of riches, if you will. The rest of us living on 15 to 30% margins need to think a little harder about what we do and why.
    - ur-whale 5mo ago
      > I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80% explain how GOOG's margin is 80% what methodology do you use to derive that number? just curious.
      - giancarlostoro 5mo ago
        Wasn't it always somewhere between 20 to 30% (especially more recently in the 30s) but the real difference is, they're in the billions of dollars, your small business might be in the millions, it's quite a drastic difference altogether.
      - Eisenstein 5mo ago
        Its 36% for Q1 2026. * https://i.imgur.com/3gDVMCk.png https://i.imgur.com/3gDVMCk.png
bmitc 5mo ago
I have never understood basically any decision Google makes at any level. I think they're equivalent to a land owner sitting on top of oil. They have no idea what to do, and anything they do makes pennies compared to the oil, so it doesn't really matter what they do on top of that, customers be damned. As if I needed another reason to hate them, they turned our Nest back to shitty thermostats last year by dropping older models from their Google Home service. There's no justification for it other than some product owner wanted to.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
kilroy123 5mo ago
With a LOT of money, that's how.
crespire 5mo ago
This is the Google messaging problem all over again. Hangouts, Google Chat, Google Hangout Google whatever the fuck, messaging, GMail chat, Google Wave, Google Duo, Google MS Teams. Now Meets Chat is Hangouts again!
- Rebuff5007 5mo ago
  Between this comment, and the comment above, I dont know what feels like fair criticism here. Having a single perfect product strategy with non-overlapping product categories and understandable names is hard for any organization, particularly in a rapidly evolving space. Its obviously an issue to have multiple mature products be chaotically names. At this moment antigravity and gemini cli and are hardly mature. Isn't now the perfect time to consolidate?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - butlike 5mo ago
    Each consolidation is a reset. It's essentially a vote saying the brand recognition isn't strong enough, which implies a low confidence in the product
baby 5mo ago
I still call it bard

seviu 5mo ago

In those rare occasion when I want to use Gemini I just type gemini on my terminal. Gemini was on life support on my side. I barely get to use it due to its subpar performance in coding, which is to be honest the only use I have of it. And now I read that they spent 4 to 5 months testing 3.5 internally. Let that sink in. By the time they release the world has moved on. I don’t know who makes decisions at Google regarding AI but it saddens me to see this happening. Google should be up there leading but they are lagging against everybody. How can I justify dropping 100$ per month, for a coding agent that is half a year behind, knowing that Codex or Kimi is going to do much better? Stock might be ripping but that’s about it.

popcorncowboy 5mo ago
On the other hand I quietly cheer every time they fumble even slightly, in their seemingly inexorable march to becoming our ultimate, terrifying, corporate overlords.
- pimeys 5mo ago
  Yes. Every possible pain they have makes me happy when their other hand is slowly destroying Android. Let them suffer.
kreelman 5mo ago
I get what you're saying about Gemini for coding and it's useful that you mention it. I wonder though if Google isn't so worried about the viability of their coding AIs and have a longer term view than simply providing coding aids. This might also be indicated by their recent $40B investment in Anthropic, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40-billion-in-anthropic-as-search-giant-spreads-its-ai-bets.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40-bi... ...Only time will tell!
- Glohrischi 5mo ago
  I think google has another 'problem': Gemini needs to do a lot more than claude. They use Gemini for personal assistent to all of their Gmail and co users/customers. They have Google Docs, they have GCP were gemini should support you too. They also have a lot more languages to support too. They optimize Gemini for A LOT more than 'just' coding. So its probably a balance act for them. And because they are that rich and have no issues on compute and brain, they can play the long game easily. If they push their tpu further and continue their build out, they will be able to start training high quality topic optimized models in parallel while everyone else needs the same amount to just train one main model.
  - amunozo 5mo ago
    What is preventing them from making a coding dedicated model if that's the issue?
    - Mond_ 5mo ago
      Strategic vision. The common sentiment is that you didn't really want to do that. You expect higher returns from only having a single base model.

jstummbillig 5mo ago

I would wager your feelings conflict with their analysis (which they are probably quite good at, with all that practice)

crakhamster01 5mo ago
> I would wager your feelings conflict with their analysis How their target audience feels isn’t separate from “analysis” - it’s the input.
cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
As someone who worked there for a decade, I would wager instead that all that analysis at the top makes no difference when you're unable to execute because your internal politics are broken. EDIT: ... also that the analysis at the "top" is mostly being made by people with the wrong incentives and motives, too.

blitzar 5mo ago

I disagree; gemini is their ai model brand, antigravity is their code harness. Its much better branding than calling every single product "Co-Pilot (tm)".

ethbr1 5mo ago
Ah, so Gemini is the new Watson.
- blitzar 5mo ago
  Gemini Inside (tm)
dbbk 5mo ago
Yes it'd be like if Claude Code was actually called Opus
- dzikimarian 5mo ago
  Except they have Flash & Pro labels too for another level of complexity

hydra-f 5mo ago

By unifying the billing and quota systems, as well as providing better integration, I presume The Antigravity harness is by far better than the gemini-cli one. Antigravity also offers models other than Gemini as well. When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model It's great that gemini-cli is open-source, but that also comes with a bunch of ai-generated issues and pull-requests, which is sure to impede development

crakhamster01 5mo ago
> Antigravity also offers models other than Gemini as well. When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model. I the other reasons you mentioned could be solved while keeping the Gemini name, but this is a fair point. I didn't realize they offered 3rd party models! > When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform whereas when you say Gemini you think of the model Yea I guess if their goal long-term is to be something more akin to Cursor that makes sense, but Anthropic seems to be doing just fine using "Claude" in their naming scheme.
tauntz 5mo ago
> When you say Antigravity, you think of a platform Absolutely not? When you say "Antigravity" then the first thing that comes to mind is "yet another IDE" and I have no desire in switching my IDE.
- decimalenough 5mo ago
  It's not an IDE, it's a way to run agents. In particular, the Antigravity CLI positioned as Gemini CLI's successor is a shell with superpowers, not something you would use for code development.
  - tomrod 5mo ago
    You proved the point. Gemini has been marketed better, such that even folks in the know confuse Antigravity (the IDE) with anything else attempting to be pushed.

egorfine 5mo ago

> developers will never adopt our products if we keep killing them We all want this to be the case but it's never the case. It never stops to amuse me how developers of the world fall into the Google trap again and again and again despite knowing better. Personally have been hurt a lot by the abandonment of Polymer and since then it would not occur to me to touch any Google development product because what's the point really?

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

skywhopper 5mo ago

Internal political wrangling and competition along with poor top-level leadership explain these sorts of bumbling moves. The same story that has always been at Google.

aleksiy123 5mo ago

I saw someone in a different thread describe Google product/tool strategy as a: “monkey knife fight” And tbh I can’t really argue with that.

throwaway894345 5mo ago
Reminds me of the Microsoft days circa 2010 when Microsoft published half a dozen media players (Zune!), word processors, email clients, etc.
- opsnooperfax 5mo ago
  I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80% or higher, so you can plow all that extra money into superfluous headcount tasked with objectives of questionable business value. It’s a curse of riches, if you will. The rest of us living on 15 to 30% margins need to think a little harder about what we do and why.
  - ur-whale 5mo ago
    > I think this is a systemic problem of an industry where gross margin is 80% explain how GOOG's margin is 80% what methodology do you use to derive that number? just curious.
    - giancarlostoro 5mo ago
      Wasn't it always somewhere between 20 to 30% (especially more recently in the 30s) but the real difference is, they're in the billions of dollars, your small business might be in the millions, it's quite a drastic difference altogether.
    - Eisenstein 5mo ago
      Its 36% for Q1 2026. * https://i.imgur.com/3gDVMCk.png https://i.imgur.com/3gDVMCk.png

bmitc 5mo ago

I have never understood basically any decision Google makes at any level. I think they're equivalent to a land owner sitting on top of oil. They have no idea what to do, and anything they do makes pennies compared to the oil, so it doesn't really matter what they do on top of that, customers be damned. As if I needed another reason to hate them, they turned our Nest back to shitty thermostats last year by dropping older models from their Google Home service. There's no justification for it other than some product owner wanted to.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

kilroy123 5mo ago

With a LOT of money, that's how.

crespire 5mo ago

This is the Google messaging problem all over again. Hangouts, Google Chat, Google Hangout Google whatever the fuck, messaging, GMail chat, Google Wave, Google Duo, Google MS Teams. Now Meets Chat is Hangouts again!

Rebuff5007 5mo ago
Between this comment, and the comment above, I dont know what feels like fair criticism here. Having a single perfect product strategy with non-overlapping product categories and understandable names is hard for any organization, particularly in a rapidly evolving space. Its obviously an issue to have multiple mature products be chaotically names. At this moment antigravity and gemini cli and are hardly mature. Isn't now the perfect time to consolidate?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- butlike 5mo ago
  Each consolidation is a reset. It's essentially a vote saying the brand recognition isn't strong enough, which implies a low confidence in the product

baby 5mo ago

I still call it bard