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Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

ankursethi.com

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

#22

Post by BoorishBears »

Havoc wrote: post #7

Yeah can't figure out WTH is going on in google's AI ecosystem either. They absolutely deserve credit for their free tier API keys though. That's unheard of in big cloud - an actual you can't shoot yourself in the foot with a life ruining bill thing. Can't recall what part of their product maze I got it from but it seems to do what it says on tin

You can sum it up as: Gemini from AI Studio and Gemini from Vertex AI Studio have independent rate limits.

-

And I guess to add some context, it's because Google seemingly realized that Google Cloud moves so glacially slow, and has so much baggage, that they could no longer compete with scrappier startups like OpenAI and Anthropic on developer mindshare.

So there's a separate product org that owns AI Studio, which tries to be more nimble, and probably 50x'd Gemini adoption by using API Keys instead of Service Accounts and JSON certs that take mapping out the 9th circle of hell to deploy in some environments. (although iirc Vertex now has those)

They definitely do ship faster than Google Cloud, but their offerings actually end up feeling like a product team with fewer resources than OpenAI or Anthropic (like shipping purple tailwind-slop UIs as real features), which is just nuts.

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

#23

Post by cj »

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.

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

#24

Post by neom »

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 complex within a massive machine - given how focused on the product he appears to be, I have high hopes.

https://x.com/OfficialLoganK

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

#26

Post by binsquare »

Sevii wrote: post #17
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…

That has definitely changed. Google AdWords today is one of the most unfriendly services to onboard I've ever encountered. Signing up is trivial, setting up your first ad is easy, then you instantly get banned. Appeals do nothing. You essentially have to hire a professional just to use it.

Also adding onto this, it is impossible to get human support!

One of my co-workers left with an active account and active card but no passwords noted. The company gave up and just had to cancel + create a new account for the next adwords specialist.

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

#28

Post by mox1 »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #2

I didn't even need to read the article to upvote, and doing so just confirmed my assumption that somebody finally wrote down their frustration with Gemini. My fucking god, how has Google not flagged the failure of onboarding devs like Claude / Codex? 3 days ago I was literally thinking, I want to throw 20$ to try out Gemini alongside my Claude and Codex subs. It took me a few minutes to realize its just not worth my…

I wanted to try Googles Image generation models, to compliment my Claude API sub.

Holy Crap, I got about 45 minutes into setting up billing and just gave up and un-did everything.

Hint: If you want to put a spending Limit on your google cloud account, its not trivial.

I will say that Stability AI is similar to Claude, they will just let you buy credits and hit an API.

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

#30

Post by LiamPowell »

Sevii wrote: post #17
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…

That has definitely changed. Google AdWords today is one of the most unfriendly services to onboard I've ever encountered. Signing up is trivial, setting up your first ad is easy, then you instantly get banned. Appeals do nothing. You essentially have to hire a professional just to use it.

Yet it's still absolutely inundated with scams and occasionally links that directly download malware[1] that they don't action reports on. I don't think the process needs to be easier if they already can't keep up with moderation.

[1]: https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR129387695568...

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