AI Studio is legitimately the worst UX experience on the internet. For a company with unlimited cash and the ability to hire the best talent, I just don’t get it. Give nearly anyone else a few hours alone with that codebase and Opus-5.5 and it will be looking 1,000x better.
I wanted to pay them money to try their things. I just literally couldn't figure out how to do it. I think I then managed to get some trial credits but I never managed to activate anything with them and hit API limit after basically one prompt.
> AI Studio is legitimately the worst UX experience
Their backend looks very confused too. I consume their models through OpenRouter and requests are processed randomly by AI Studio or Vertex. API key management had several entry points for a while too, with the option to query the same model with a GCP, Firebase and/or AI Studio API key.
Agreed.
When I signed a few devs at work up for Gemini for Code I had to go into Google Cloud, jump through several different screens, assign special permissions to each dev to make it work and even when it did work...it was insanely confusing compared to every other option out there.
It's to the point where I'm better off asking Grok Bot set it up for me rather than ever deal with figuring it out again.
Yeah Tibo has a tweet where he talks about how he tried to do stuff at Google and they just wouldn't let him. Doesn't matter how much $ and talent you have if you are actively sandbagging them (and of course, for truly great stuff, you want the whole org from the very top driving you on, a la Musk or Jobs).
https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2083596911060324570?a=iif1W7...
> the ability to hire the best talent
Is this true anymore? I feel like a lot of the best talent have better opportunities elsewhere where they won't get bogged down by entrenched bureaucracy. Not to mention the Google interview process and physical locations filter out a lot of talented people from even wanting to apply.
They're banned from using Opus-5.5 or other competitor models so they can't fix it.
Ironically, Gemini is excellent with UI/UX, and somehow they can't use it to improve themselves.
I love when my kid and and I are using AI Studio to make tower defense games, and it tries to squeeze in reasons to make Gemini API calls. No, I don't want a Gemini-populated random news ticker in my tower defense game.
What's wrong with it? I haven't used it, just curious to hear its faults
If you have ever worked for a large company you can quickly imagine why they cant execute. Google is old now and entrenched. We will see how long it takes them to become IBM/GE etc. (if they are not already headed that direction).
Do they still have 5 messaging apps or did they finally trim it down.
What about Workday? That's the standard in terms of horrible experience.
>For a company with unlimited cash and the ability to hire the best talent
Right. They lack no resources. Therefore, what is happening must be what they want to happen.
Google has an near monopoly on Internet ads (or rather a duo-poly combined with Facebook). Having such an monopoly makes them have hindsights on what they are doing and how they are failing, or even if they do, the incentives and management just aren't cleanly aligned with what ought to be the case.
> "AI Studio is legitimately the worst UX experience on the internet."
I find it hard to believe there aren't worse ones out there. But off the top of my head I actually can't think of any...
Quite incredible that you can say a sentence like that, while talking about something within Google(/Alphabet) that's actually an important area for them (not just some random little side project), and yet it isn't hyperbolic, it's sincere!
Everyone there overseeing it (from direct management all the way up to C-suite) should truly feel embarrassed.