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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

#311

Post by cortesoft »

nicbou wrote: post #74
sh34r wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 You say that as if it isn’t the entire reason why these interactions should be avoided at all costs. Dynamic pricing should be a crime.

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.

Every time I go to a presentation about the health care options I have, it ends up just being the representative reading off a slide with the actual information. All the information I need is in print. I have never received a single piece of valuable information that wasn’t easier to get just reading the docs myself.

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

#312

Post by cortesoft »

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…

This is really not true in my experience. In fact, all my experience has been with products that aren’t THAT expensive, and the individual dev teams do decide. These are SaaS products, and sometimes the total cost is under $1000 a year, and I still can’t get prices without contacting sales.

Also, it isn’t just ICs. I have worked as a senior director, with a few dozen people reporting into me… and I still never want to talk to a sales person on the phone about a product. I want to be able to read the docs, try it out myself, maybe sign up for a small plan. Look, if you want to put the extras (support contracts, bulk discounts, contracting help, etc) behind a sales call, fine. But I need to be able to use your product at a basic level before I would ever do a sales call.

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

#313

Post by jasonstephen »

bosky101 wrote: post #279
neom wrote: post #24

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 compl…

@logan waiting for named apikeys

@bosky101 We have renaming API Keys in AI Studio today. Please reach out to me on X (@jastephx) if you have other feature requests around API Keys.

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

#314

Post by mrieck »

logankilpatrick wrote: post #305

Hey! Very valid feedback on setting up a billing account. This is something I have been pushing for over the last 2 years at Google. The good news: setting up billing directly in AI Studio tested internally and will be shipped in January : ) Will follow up on some of the other threads in here!

Will that change also allow paying upfront ($250 or whatever) to bump up a tier?

I want to release a service using computer-use but am worried about 429 quota errors if I have actual users.

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

#315

Post by josefresco »

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.

I sell managed Google Ads services and have never had issues with my clients being banned. Google Ads sucks for 1000 other reasons.

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

#318

Post by rezonant »

verdverm wrote: post #310
rezonant wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of multiple Chrome profiles and I do not want to use them. Google should simply make their account switching consistent across their apps and work sensibly in these corner cases.

"simply" is doing a lot of work, profiles is the outcome of addressing the problems you are talking about. Many people enjoy them and find them useful. Why are you against using them?

Simply isn't doing much work, account switching works just fine on GMail, search, maps, calendar etc. The issue is that some Google apps do not follow the standard of the overall fleet. Google gives us the account switching feature, it's obviously an intended way to use their products. Otherwise they would not give you that and tell you to use browser profiles.

I don't want my history, bookmarks, open tabs and login sessions at every website divided among my 5 GSuite workspace accounts and my 1 personal Gmail. That adds a bunch of hassle for what? The removal of a minor annoyance when I use these specific Google apps? That is taking a sledge hammer to a slightly bent nail.

If it works for you, great, that's why it's there. But doing this for anything more than the basic happy path setup of "I have one personal account and 1 GSuite work account" is nuts in my opinion.

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

#319

Post by whalesalad »

logankilpatrick wrote: post #305

Hey! Very valid feedback on setting up a billing account. This is something I have been pushing for over the last 2 years at Google. The good news: setting up billing directly in AI Studio tested internally and will be shipped in January : ) Will follow up on some of the other threads in here!

> setting up billing directly in AI Studio tested internally and will be shipped in January

Does this mean I can finally use premium features without onboarding my entire google workspace? I made the mistake of getting a good chunk of my family on my google app domain back in ~2007. For the last few years, I spend $80 per month just to host their email because the cost is easier to deal with than the human beings themselves. But I want to use the latest premium Google AI tooling and as far as I can tell the only way to do that is to upgrade my google workspace to the next tier and blow even more $$$ away each month. Suffice to say I have not done this, but it is a blocker from using things like Nano Banana with a non-gmail account.

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

#320

Post by mrieck »

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…

At least Google models like Nano Banana Pro release Day 1 on https://fal.ai

I made a free Chrome extension that uses Fal api key if you want a UI instead of code

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-slop-canvas/dogg...

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