561–570 of 752 posts
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Literally just use Firefox.
Firefox is financed by Google and makes them survive (but yes, clearly the only realistic alternative that is not Chromium-based)
Firefox would be able to survive without Google, even though it currently chooses not to. Mozilla is not Firefox any more than Linux Foundation is Linux.
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Offering goods or services below the cost of their production is often illegal, though. It's called "dumping". Although in this case it's probably impossible to define, given the complexity of calculating the true cost of tokens.
First of all, I doubt they’re losing money in inference. Even across subscriptions. This is a tired argument that has been repeated so many times on HN. Second, that’s not what dumping means. It’s a specific term for international trade. Third, it’s not illegal to sell something for below the cost to make it. That’s another common misunderstanding.
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So the issue is the same as Anthropic. They do charge for it though their API. The users, however, want to use the discounted "unlimited" flat rate through the first-party app instead, then get mad when they are told they have to use the same API every other third-party app does.
No, the problem is that the discounted rate exists in the first place. Essentially these are unfair business practices, product cross subsidization to ensure market dominance. See also: Microsoft and a whole bunch of other companies. And once they've got their monopoly position there is inevitably the rug-pull. I wonder if some CPO somewhere actually had the guts to put a 'rug pull' item on the product roadmap.
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> Isn't the reason companies are doing this because they're offering tokens at a discount, provided they're spent through their tooling? Then maybe they should charge for that instead of banning accounts? Google decided on their own business plan without any guns to their backs. If they decide to create a plan that is subsidized that's entirely on them.
Google wants usage that earns them street cred, not usage from bots who will never evaluate the output. They're all fighting tooth and nail to acquire customers, both free and paid... they didn't want their giveaways to be burned.
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How about giving the user a big warning to not do that and then block the account if the user continues. This total blocks are crazy. Especially for people who use their Google account for 20+ years or something.
Time and time again it is shown to *not* use your main account for everything. This goes for Apple and having a separate account for development work, for the App Store and your main iCloud account but this also goes for all other SaaS providers. You are doing groundbreaking new and untested stuff with Claw? Do not use your main account. You want to access your main account's data? Sure, allow it via OAUTH/whatever p…
Good luck opening new google accounts for separation of concern. The new account is banned before the eula page finishes loading.
Google sends code via text msg to my main account phone number to unban, without me ever even filling a phone number.
After a day the account was banned again and pending automatic deletion. The appeal then took an artificial 5 days wait. I had to plead to what I presume is an AI. I had just paid $100 so it's not like I didn't show I was serious.
I am fairly certain that if they ban one account they will also ban the other anyways.
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If I say “you can use my car for $250/month if you don’t smoke in it” and then you pay me that money and you drive around until one day you smoke in it, I’m not going to let you smoke in my car. I told you not to smoke in it and you smoked in it. That’s the deal. All seems fine to me tbh.
I think it's a bad analogy. For one - smoking does very high permanent damage to a car interior. Two - the usage pattern was Shaun's toc but not obviously against the spirit. More like "you can use my car to drive around as much as you want" And then going: Obviously I didn't mean driving to another coast on a highway
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Have you tried Kagi yet? It's pretty popular among HN folks, and I find it easily worth the price.
Kagi indirectly funds the Kremlin's regime, just to know where your money goes if we're talking about not supporting google.
I don't understand how this can be enforced without ridiculous levels of false positives. I'm truly baffled. The same with Claude Code situation. gemini-cli, claude-code, codex etc, they ALL have a -p flag or equivalent, which is non-interactive IO interface for their LLM inference. If I wire my tooling (or openclaw) to use the -p flag (or equivalents), is that allowed? Okay, maybe they get rid of the -p flag and I h…
Haha, no. I can tell you that it is so obvious and there is basically no false positives. Can’t share more details though. If it makes you feel any better, some google employees have their personal accounts banned too (only Gemini access, not the whole account) for running opeclaw, and also have a hard time getting their account reinstated.
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If it's a large company, that can dominate the market by absorbing the losses until competition disappears? Arguably, yes.
The question is over what timescale and volume. Toyota shouldn't have to sell their first new car off the line for 100 million to pay for the entire manufacturing line. Your first SAAS customer shouldn't have to pay back all your costs. Can you plan to break even after your first month of sales? first year? 10 years?