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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

#141

Post by Arainach »

cortesoft wrote: post #31
dannyobrien wrote: post #11

The odd thing about all of this (well, I guess it's not odd, just ironic), is that when Google AdWords started, one of the notable things about it was that anyone could start serving or buying ads. You just needed a credit-card. I think that bought Google a lot of credibility (along with the ads being text-only) as they entered an already disreputable space: ordinary users and small businesses felt they were getting…

I have had way too many arguments over the years with product and sales people at my job on the importance of instant self-signup. I want to be able to just pay and go, without having to talk to people or wait for things. I know part of it is that sales wants to be able to price discriminate and wants to be able to use their sales skills on a customer, but I am never going to sign up for anything that makes me talk t…

Instant self signup died with cryptocurrency and now AI: any "free" source of compute/storage/resources will be immediately abused until you put massive gates on account creation.

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

#142

Post by makeitdouble »

cortesoft wrote: post #31
dannyobrien wrote: post #11

The odd thing about all of this (well, I guess it's not odd, just ironic), is that when Google AdWords started, one of the notable things about it was that anyone could start serving or buying ads. You just needed a credit-card. I think that bought Google a lot of credibility (along with the ads being text-only) as they entered an already disreputable space: ordinary users and small businesses felt they were getting…

I have had way too many arguments over the years with product and sales people at my job on the importance of instant self-signup. I want to be able to just pay and go, without having to talk to people or wait for things. I know part of it is that sales wants to be able to price discriminate and wants to be able to use their sales skills on a customer, but I am never going to sign up for anything that makes me talk t…

> sales people

> talk to people

There will clearly be a gap in understanding, when their whole job is to talk to people, and you come to them to argue for clients to not do that.

As you point out it's not that black and white, most companies will have tiers of client they want to spend less or more time with etc. but sales wanting direct contact with clients is I think a fundamental bit.

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

#143

Post by antonvs »

kunley wrote: post #126

> I was fifteen minutes into writing some code by hand like a Neanderthal Tell me this isn't classism. Tell me this kind of narrative isn't a new norm

I can’t tell if you might be joking. If you are, the rest of this comment is irrelevant.

That general idiom is old and fairly widely used. There was a Seinfeld episode in 1997 in which Elaine talked about “…not lurching around like a caveman.”

If you’re objecting to criticism of writing code by hand, the phrase is almost invariably used in a self-deprecating way, acknowledging some inefficiency or old-fashioned behavior with comic hyperbole. It’s not criticizing people who write code by hand as such - the author is criticizing themselves for doing something the hard way.

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

#144

Post by vel0city »

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.

You should read about the Chicago Parking Meters scandal. The City of Chicago leased all their meter rights to a private corporation on a 75 year lease for a bit over a billion dollars. The private company made it back in the first decade. The city even has to pay the parking company when they have to do construction or throw events that blocks the parking as revenue compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Parking_Meters

This doesn't apply to private pay lots though, so there's still some amount of "choice".

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

#145

Post by Ozzie_osman »

I was recently (vibe)-coding some games with my kid, and we wanted some basic text-to-speech functionality. We tested Google's Gemini models in-browser, and they worked great, so we figured we'd add them to the app. Some fun learnings:

1. You can access those models via three APIs: the Gemini API (which it turns out is only for prototyping and returned errors 30% of the time), the Vertex API (much more stable but lacking in some functionality), and the TTS API (which performed very poorly despite offering the same models). They also have separate keys (at least, Gemini vs Vertex).

2. Each of those APIs supports different parameters (things like language, whether you can pass a style prompt separate from the words you want spoken, etc). None of them offered the full combination we wanted.

3. To learn this, you have to spend a couple hours reading API docs, or alternatively, just have Claude Code read the docs then try all different combinations and figure out what works and what doesn't (with the added risk that it might hallucinate something).

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

#146

Post by CSMastermind »

It's so terrible. I cannot tell you the hours I've wasted trying to find a way to see all the Gemini API keys generated in my organization and I have been unsuccessful. I've tried AI Studio, GCP, and Google Admin.

We've reverted to everyone at the company just using the API key I created because I can't figure out a way to give anyone else visibility into keys and usage.

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

#147

Post by CSMastermind »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #145

I was recently (vibe)-coding some games with my kid, and we wanted some basic text-to-speech functionality. We tested Google's Gemini models in-browser, and they worked great, so we figured we'd add them to the app. Some fun learnings: 1. You can access those models via three APIs: the Gemini API (which it turns out is only for prototyping and returned errors 30% of the time), the Vertex API (much more stable but lac…

Some other fun things you'll find:

- The models perform differently when called via the API vs in the Gemini UI.

- The Gemini API will randomly fail about 1% of the time, retry logic is basically mandatory.

- API performance is heavily influenced by the whims of the Google we've observed spreads between 30 seconds and 4 minutes for the same query depending on how Google is feeling that day.

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

#148

Post by guelo »

Not just gemini, my sense is that many of google's products are collapsing in terms of confusing features and quality. I use to be a fanboy but I've been painfully extracting myself from their ecosystem, more because of the constant churn of product issues than because of any political issues. I suspect it's an instance of conway's law where the org chart has become a disaster after all the layoffs and reorgs.

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

#150

Post by TheTaytay »

timr wrote: post #117
dpkirchner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and they should have that option. But in my experience business-folks ask techies to evaluate services all the time, and ideally we can just start out in the low-/no-touch tier to feel things out. If that tier isn't available, us techs might just try a different service.

The kind of products hidden behind sales calls are generally the sort where the opinion of IC-level tech staff is next to irrelevant. With these kinds of products, the purchase decision is being made at a group level, the contract sizes are large, and budgetary approvals are required. It’s a snowball the size of a house, and it started rolling down the mountain months (or years) before it got to your desk. Literally…

I think this is true at larger organizations, but even a “small/medium” startup can easily sign contracts for single services for $100k+, and in my experience, salespeople really do care about commissions at those price points. A lot of software gets a foothold in an org by starting with the ICs, and individuals, not groups, are often the ones that request or approve software. Github and Slack are good examples of services who make very good use of their ability to self-serve their customers out of the gate, in spite of also supporting very large orgs.

In these conversations, I never ever see the buyers justifying or requesting a sales process involving people and meetings and opaque pricing.

It’s true that complicated software needs more talking, but there is a LOT of software that could be bought without a meeting. The sales department won’t stand for it though.

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