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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

#161

Post by Aperocky »

jiggawatts wrote: post #156
lxe wrote: post #152

I always wondered how something like AWS or GCP Cloud Console admin UIs get shipped. How could someone deliver a product like these and be satisfied, rewarded, promoted, etc. How can Google leadership look at this stuff and be like... "yup, people love this".

A purer, more perfect example of Conway’s Law has never been made more manifest than the myriad AWS consoles, each further partitioned by region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law And see especially “The Only Unbreakable Rule” by Molly Rocket: https://youtu.be/5IUj1EZwpJY

In defense of AWS consoles, they are derivative of AWS APIs, as such they are really just a convenience layer that will only occasionally string 2+ AWS APIs together for convenience purposes that can be considered distinct feature on the console.

That is wholly unlike the problem here where the console and API somehow behaves completely differently.

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

#162

Post by Marsymars »

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 long ago concluded that trying to mix multiple google (or MS) accounts in the same browser profile is a path to madness.

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

#163

Post by DANmode »

CSMastermind wrote: post #147
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.

So, not something for a production app yet.

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

#164

Post by DANmode »

lxe wrote: post #152

I always wondered how something like AWS or GCP Cloud Console admin UIs get shipped. How could someone deliver a product like these and be satisfied, rewarded, promoted, etc. How can Google leadership look at this stuff and be like... "yup, people love this".

Google doesn’t have leadership, it has shareholders.

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

#165

Post by kro »

leopoldj wrote: post #51
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…

As the article states, generating the key itself is easy. But getting credit and billing are the issues.

Agree, Google made it really easy here, compared to using service account certificates like with some of their other APIs.

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

#166

Post by wosat »

g-unit33 wrote: post #87

Wait until the 429 error message

What's really fun is how inconsistent they are with "request" limits, at least with the embedding API. The documentation says "X requests per minute" but what they really mean is "X documents per minute". But their reporting shows requests per minute. So if you are embedding multiple documents per request, you will start getting 429s but the usage dashboard will look like you are nowhere near the limit. Super fun.

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

#169

Post by niwtsol »

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 agree that Google's console is slightly better, but a few of my gripes with AWS specifically: 1. input fields that lack basic validation so you do some action and then get an error message that is cryptic when simple "if this value selected in drop down, you can't do X". Another example of this is needing to get quota increase for your AWS account for an instance type, but nothing on the frontend tells you that, and you have to go through 3 or 4 weirdly linked support ticket/pages to figure out how to make a request for an instance. 2. As another commenter said, billing - so many pages and ways to cut the data but somehow it still seems complicated to find "which instance is attached to resource X that is costing me $Y per month" 3. Documentation not matching UI - so many PMs/TPMs over the years making resources that you find a blog/post that is a walk through, but then you find they redesigned or moved a button and that makes it difficult to follow. 4. I worked at Amazon for a bit and the internal tools feel like they were built in the early 2000s and I think I have PTSD from that which I still ascribe bad feelings towards AWS as there are similarities

I think as you use it, you start to understand the gotchas and the flows you need to do to get something working. I also appreciate there is a ton of stuff they are empowering users to do and the scale is incomprehensible, but just frustrated the UX is so poor.

I just started using Azure for another project and my goodness, I can't even login to that vs the microsoft ads account w/ the same email because of some weird MS365 permissions issue - by far the worst.

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