alt Hacker NewsI don't get it, Google could heavily subsidy their Gemini models to make it more attractive, but they prefer to not do it. I don't know one soul who is using Gemini models to code. Even OpenAI who doesn't have money or capacity is offering their Luna model at $1.2 per 1M/out.
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What you're not seeing are the subsidized Google Cloud startup credits, which includes Gemini. If you're in that program, you choose Gemini because it's essentially "free" and consistent.
Google's open secret is that they are also capturing spend on OAI and Anthropic tokens.
It makes sense. All these models are money losing businesses.
As a business Google might want to focus on fundamental research 2-3 years from now and not compete on who acquires more money losing customers. Just stay little behind and invest money better.
the race for the smartest/cheapest model is a race to the bottom. selling the tools is much more profitable.
Google was cash-flow negative in Q2 2026, and is raising a lot of debt.
I am not sure they can afford to subsidize Gemini more than they already do.
Why would they? Unless they have lots of unused tpu real estate that they could host it on “for free” they would be bumping more profitable workloads off of machines to give away that capacity to people with zero long term loyalty. There is no business reason for google to subsidize these models.
OpenAI has too much money. They’re spending their money in stupid ways.