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Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

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Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#101

Post by lokar »

transcriptase wrote: post #92
pooper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say that as if it isn’t the entire reason why these interactions should be avoided at all costs. Dynamic pricing should be a crime. Does segmentation also count as dynamic pricing? -- The IT guy at Podunk Lutheran College has no money: Gratis. The IT guy at a medium-sized real estate agency has some money: $500. The IT guy at a Fortune 100 company has tons of money: $50,000. https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you…

The entire lab supply industry is disgusting in this respect. The funding (and recent grants) that a given professor or research lab has is generally publicly available information that vendors will buy in easily digestible formats from brokers and companies that scrape the websites of major granting agencies. All of their products, however realistically commoditized, will require a drawn out engagement with a rep wh…

A group of research universities should start a non-profit co-op to produce this for them.

Getting just the university of California should be enough critical mass.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#102

Post by ipaddr »

ra wrote: post #80
intothemild wrote: post #78

I like using Gemini for general stuff, I have that Gemini AI plan thing, and it's great. But I absolutely will not plug my credit card into Google cloud services, no way.. I know I can put guardrails up, but I just am terrified that I'll get a gigantic bill that I cannot afford. Nope sorry no way. I want a simple $X per month sub. Claude gives me that. Which is why Claude wins.

That's fine but you're missing out, and you're most likely paying waay more than you need to.

Missing out on nothing

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#103

Post by amluto »

rezonant wrote: post #85
amluto wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gemini via studio Excuse me? If you mean AI Studio, are you talking about the product where you can’t even switch which logged in account you’re using without agreeing to its terms under whatever random account it selected, where the ability to turn off training on your data does not obviously exist, and where it’s extremely unclear how an organization is supposed to pay for it?

Yes, much like admin.google.com (the GSuite admin interface), which goes ahead and tries to two-factor your personal GMail account every single time you load it instead of asking you which of the actual GSuite accounts you're signed into you'd like to use...

I love how the two factor screen has no obvious way to tell it that you want a different account.

Hint: you can often avoid some of this mess by adding the authuser=user@domain to the URL.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#105

Post by mvkel »

neom wrote: post #24

I complained about this on HN recently and Logan responded and asked me to email him with feedback on how I'd like the experience to work (I didn't, sorry Logan, been busy :)) - Logan, to his credit, is very active everywhere reading and soliciting feedback. I think they're going to be giving it a pretty big bump on ux/ui of AI studio next month. It's easy to see he's a super smart guy trying to build something compl…

This has often been the case (Google dev rel soliciting feedback) and they very rarely take meaningful action. Like firing a bug report with Apple.

They'll get to it when it becomes strategically important to.

Why making it easier to pay them isn't always strategically important, I'm not sure.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#106

Post by bobviolier »

yawnxyz wrote: post #65
obmelvin wrote: post #43

I don't understand the multiple posts / comments I've seen about this. I google `gemini API key` and the first result* is this docs page: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key That docs page has a link in the first primary section on the page. Sure, it could be a huge CTA, but this is a docs page, so it's kinda nice that it's not gone through a marketing make over. * besides sponsored result for AI Studio (Ma…

I've to this day never been able to pay for Gemini through the API, even though I've tried maybe 6-7 times If you bring it up to Logan he'll just brush it off — I honestly don't know if they test these UX flows with their own personal accounts, or if something is buggy with my account.

https://x.com/OfficialLoganK/status/1978897746921693572?s=20

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#107

Post by ipaddr »

cj wrote: post #23
tigranbs wrote: post #8

Yeah, then try adding more quotas to scale your usage; you will feel the pain! But, to be fair, it is way easier than the AWS Bedrock or Microsoft Azure!

Isn't OpenAI equally annoying? I remember multiple waiting periods, and multiple requirements to cross spend thresholds to increase in tiers. I remember at one point spamming the OpenAI API with garbage just to consume credits in order to get to the next tier to increase rate limits. More recently (couple months ago) I tried using a 3rd party client for ChatGPT which needed a OpenAI API key. I gave up after 20 mins.

The OpenAI api key generation was simple and using it no problem. No different from stripe.

The limits are annoying.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#108

Post by levocardia »

Add me to the list of "saw nano banana pro, attempted to get an API key for like 5min, failed and gave up." Maybe I am a dummy (quite possible) but I have seen many smart people similarly flummoxed!

You can walk into a McDonalds without being able to read, write, or speak English, and the order touchscreen UI is so good (er, "good") that you can successfully order a hamburger in about 60 seconds. Why can't Google (of all companies) figure this out?

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#109

Post by JohnMakin »

levocardia wrote: post #108

Add me to the list of "saw nano banana pro, attempted to get an API key for like 5min, failed and gave up." Maybe I am a dummy (quite possible) but I have seen many smart people similarly flummoxed! You can walk into a McDonalds without being able to read, write, or speak English, and the order touchscreen UI is so good (er, "good") that you can successfully order a hamburger in about 60 seconds. Why can't Google (of…

because the bubble in which googlers exist is inherently user-hostile, even to their own detriment. been like this for a while

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#110

Post by squirrellous »

As a former employee, the engineering culture at Google gives me old-school hacker vibes, so users are very much expected to “figure it out” and that’s somewhat accepted (and I say this with fond memories). It’s no surprise the company struggles with good UX.
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