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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

#121

Post by CGamesPlay »

JohnMakin wrote: post #109
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

The difference here is that many of Google's users are cost centers, but in this case Google is being hostile to their profit centers as well.

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

#122

Post by KerrickStaley »

In my personal experience, OpenRouter makes it easy to call Gemini 3 Pro Preview and other frontier LLMs with very little setup. It’s great for projects where you want to compare different LLMs or have the flexibility to switch. It charges a 5.5% fee on top of the base API price so at scale you would want to switch to directly calling the provider.

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

#123

Post by vinhnx »

A few months ago, I had a frustrating experience with the Gemini API while building an AI chat app as a side project. I registered through AI Studio and set up billing via Google Cloud Console, which offered a free trial with $200 in credits or 3 months of API usage. After deploying the Gemini API for my project, I navigated through the numerous settings in Google Cloud Console but forgot to set a billing limit. That month, I was charged over $250 on my credit card, well beyond the free trial allowance. It was entirely my fault for not setting a limit and not reviewing the free trial terms more carefully.

That said, while setting up the Gemini API through AI Studio is remarkably straightforward for small side projects, transitioning to production with proper billing requires navigating the labyrinth that is Google Cloud Console. The contrast between AI Studio's simplicity and the complexity of production billing setup is jarring, it's easy to miss critical settings when you're trying to figure out where everything is.

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

#124

Post by CamperBob2 »

the_snooze wrote: post #95
Workaccount2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number one rule of business that should just be passively reiterated to everyone working in any type of transactional field: 1. Never make it hard for people to give you money.

Parking apps don’t seem to care much for that. They know you’ll jump through their shoddy UIs and data collection because they have a local monopoly. Often with physical payment kiosks removed and replaced with “download our shitty app!” notices.

(Shrug) No, I'll just park someplace else. I probably need a good walk anyway.

There's no such thing as a monopoly when it comes to parking. If there is -- if every single parking spot within walking distance is locked behind a shitty app -- then you need to spend some quality time at your next city council meeting making yourself a royal PIA.

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

#125

Post by edoceo »

vinhnx wrote: post #123

A few months ago, I had a frustrating experience with the Gemini API while building an AI chat app as a side project. I registered through AI Studio and set up billing via Google Cloud Console, which offered a free trial with $200 in credits or 3 months of API usage. After deploying the Gemini API for my project, I navigated through the numerous settings in Google Cloud Console but forgot to set a billing limit. That…

It seems that billing here (and elsewhere) for cloud is intentionally opaque. Nearly every client (at scale) is having (one of) a service provider to help manage/audit these usage.

Variable costs are great, scale with the business; but visibility is a big (intentional?) challenge.

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

#127

Post by wlesieutre »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #99
the_snooze wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking apps don’t seem to care much for that. They know you’ll jump through their shoddy UIs and data collection because they have a local monopoly. Often with physical payment kiosks removed and replaced with “download our shitty app!” notices.

Plenty of people on here looking to disrupt a market with tech...c'mon guys, get on it Edit: On second thought, there is a perverse incentive at work (and probably one of the "lowest friction" ways to get money), which is issuing government enforced fines.

The crappy apps that replaced parking meters are the people who disrupted the existing market with tech

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

#128

Post by jiggawatts »

sofixa wrote: post #37
niwtsol wrote: post #34

The article lightly mentions it, but how AWS and Google Cloud Console are so absolute nonsensical in UX and ease of use is beyond comprehension.

Baring them using specific marketing terms (so you have EC2 for what are basically virtual machines), for which both the docs and the portal itself provide helpful information, what do you mean? I find GCP's console and whole set up to be slightly better, but both it and AWS are fine. Now Azure, or anything made by VMware, you just know they hate you.

I love how people think Azure is somehow worse than AWS when the latter isn't even a single portal, it's many, each of which shows just one product in one region. Oh, you needed a VM with a network and some storage, including access to blobs somewhere else in the world? Just open up a dozen tabs and join the randomly generated gibberish resource identifiers yourself manually like a savage!

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

#129

Post by verdverm »

Leynos wrote: post #53
verdverm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them are correlating gemini-cli experience (trash) with the broader access to Gemini via studio or cloud (not at all a problem)

They could always just use OpenCoder, Crush or Goose with OpenRouter ( https://openrouter.ai/google/gemini-3-pro-preview )

Google has the ADK project, which is really good.

Python is the primary implementation, Java is there, Go is relatively new and aiming for parity. They could have contributed the Typescript implementation and built on common, solid foundation, but alas, the hydra's heads are not communicating well

These other "frameworks" are (1) built by people who need to sell something, so they are often tied to their current thinking and paid features (2) sit at the wrong level. ADK gives me building blocks for generalized agents, whereas most of these frameworks are tied to coding and some peculiarities you see there (like forcing you to deal with studio, no thanks). They also have too much abstraction and I want to be able to control the lower level knobs and levers

ADK is the closest to what I've been looking for, an analog to kubernetes in the agentic space. Deal with the bs, give me great abstractions and building blocks to set me free. So many of the other frameworks want to box you into how they do things, today, given current understanding. ADK is minimal and easy to adjust as we learn things

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

#130

Post by cyberax »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #124
the_snooze wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking apps don’t seem to care much for that. They know you’ll jump through their shoddy UIs and data collection because they have a local monopoly. Often with physical payment kiosks removed and replaced with “download our shitty app!” notices.

(Shrug) No, I'll just park someplace else. I probably need a good walk anyway. There's no such thing as a monopoly when it comes to parking. If there is -- if every single parking spot within walking distance is locked behind a shitty app -- then you need to spend some quality time at your next city council meeting making yourself a royal PIA.

LOL. All the city parking spots around here are managed by PayByPhone, and pretty much all private parking spots are DiamondParking paid through ParkMobile.

I raised the issue with my local city council rep. She didn't care.

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