Similar experience for our business
Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
281–290 of 361 posts
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#2821. I typed "How do I get a gemini api key" in my chrome bar
2. Firs line in the top result said "click here and then click the Get Key Button". I clicked the link and went to the page.
3. On the page I clicked "Get Key"
4. I named the key, then selected "New project" from the dropdown. I named the new project
5. I now have a key.
I actually timed myself, it took 34 seconds. This is a garbage ragebait post.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#2831. I typed "How do I get a gemini api key" in my chrome bar 2. Firs line in the top result said "click here and then click the Get Key Button". I clicked the link and went to the page. 3. On the page I clicked "Get Key" 4. I named the key, then selected "New project" from the dropdown. I named the new project 5. I now have a key. I actually timed myself, it took 34 seconds. This is a garbage ragebait post.
You have a key that lets you chat with 2.5 Flash (often enough to satisfy my personal chat needs).
Now get a key that lets you chat with version 3 (Fast or Thinking) without severe rate limiting.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Gemini API will randomly fail about 1% of the time, retry logic is basically mandatory. That is sadly true across the board for AI inference API providers. OpenAI and Anthropic API stability usually suffers around launch events. Azure OpenAI/Foundry serving regularly has 500 errors for certain time periods. For any production feature with high uptime guarantees I would right now strongly advise for picking a mo…
Yeah at $WORK we use various LLM APIs to analyze text; it's not heavy usage in terms of tokens but maybe 10K calls per day. We've found that response times vary a lot, sometimes going over a minute for simple tasks, and random fails happen. Retry logic is definitely mandatory, and it's good to have multiple providers ready. We're abstracting calls across three different APIs (openai, gemini and mistral, btw we're get…
I've been impressed by ollama running locally for my work, involving grouping short text snippets by semantic meaning, using embeddings, as well as summarization tasks. Depending on your needs, a local GPU can sometimes beat the cloud. (I get no failures and consistent response times with no extra bill.) Obviously YMMV, and not ideal for scaling up unless you love hardware.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certain purchases (like health insurance in my country) should be a conversation, because the options are fiendishly complex and the attributes people typically use for comparison are wrong. The consequences are lifelong.
I thought thees things were complex on purpose to make it hard for people to easily understand and compare so you have to speak to a sales person who can do the upselling
Nope. I built a calculator for that last year and ooooh boy. Now I pipe half the requests to a human because of all the possible mistakes a person can make. It's crazy complicated.
Finding that human is also hard because of the perverse incentives to sell more lucrative products.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
seriously, just use different chrome profiles, but part of the issue is that they are so interwoven you pretty much have to do this
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about free? OP wanted to pay Google $100.
OP wanted "instant self signup". That doesn't work when malicious actors are trying to register accounts with stolen credentials. The verification flow is required because of the amount of pressure from malicious actors against both free and newly-created accounts. "Give access now, cancel if validation fails" doesn't work either - so long as attackers can extract more than 0 value in that duration they'll flood you…
Well, then give me self-signup with a clearly outlined verification flow that I can follow from A to Z.
If you give me a form where I can upload my passport or enter a random number from a charge on my card, that counts as "instant" enough. On the other hand, if you really need to make me wait several days while you manually review my info, fine, just tell me upfront so I can stop wasting my time. And be consistent in your UI as to whether I'm verified yet. It's all about managing expectations.
Besides, Amazon hands out reasonable quotas to newly created accounts without much hassle, and they seem to be doing okay. I won't believe for a second that trillion-dollar companies like Google don't know how to keep abuse at a manageable level without making people run in circles.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using it fine through both aistudio and vertex ai, direct API calls It's not at all hard generally, the core of this issue is centered around gemini-cli which is a hot pile of trash. The inability to get keys or account credentials (like why even use an API key, Google is top notch in auto-auth/WIF) Insanity to me how gemini-cli is so bad at the basics with so many great Google packages in open source that handle…
> I'm using it Do you mean Antigravity or Gemini? If you mean Antigravity then.. how? Their docs say you can't do this. If you mean Gemini then I personally haven't had issues but haven't tried to productionize a Gemini app. The OPs account seems to reflect other comments here.
I already said how I'm calling Gemini
> direct API Calls
I suspect Antigravity to be a big flop like gemini-cli. They are so bad in this area they couldn't even write an extension or fork oss-code, instead spending $2B to pork an open source project with someone else's branding
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#289There are plenty of ways to get access to gemini - a single google search took me directly to the simplest way (subscribe to Google AI Ultra) in one click: https://one.google.com/intl/en/about/google-ai-plans/
The author apparently found himself on a much more difficult path, one designed for enterprises who are already on google cloud, already have billing set up, etc. The fact that an individuals experience with an enterprise platform isn't great is predictable... That's why there are individual/consumer plans for this stuff.
Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought thees things were complex on purpose to make it hard for people to easily understand and compare so you have to speak to a sales person who can do the upselling
Nope. I built a calculator for that last year and ooooh boy. Now I pipe half the requests to a human because of all the possible mistakes a person can make. It's crazy complicated. Finding that human is also hard because of the perverse incentives to sell more lucrative products.
That's my point, you need to be a specialist to understand it, but the specialists are incentivised to upsell you.
A simpler product would be better for consumers, but won't happen because there are industries (and a lot of lobbying) built up around keeping the money train rolling.