logoalt Hacker News

ComputerGuru • yesterday at 6:21 PM • 6 replies • view on HN

As this is a) being served in Search, b) supposed to be 2.5x faster than 3.8 Flash, c) the element with lowest atomic weight; I deduce that, despite being more capable than 3.8 Flash, now the “entry level” model set to replace 3.5 Flash Lite.

But it is priced the same as the non-discounted 3.8 Flash, considerably higher than what anyone is paying today for 3.8 Flash or 3.5 Flash Lite or the deprecated 3.0/2.x Gemini models. How does this work? Is Google abandoning the “fast and cheap” tier? That seems like a mistake since plenty of workflows are absolutely price inelastic, meaning when the 3.8 Flash discount ends at EOY, lots of current enterprise Gemini customers would have to take their business to another shop??


Replies

pqdbr • yesterday at 6:26 PM

Same impression here. If this is Google's strategy we'll have to migrate to Luna, because costs are already high for our workload on 3.8 Flash (which in itself was already a 40% increase compared to 3.7 flash due to being more verbose and thinking more) and this now doubles cost once again.

➕ show 2 replies
wasabi991011 • yesterday at 8:21 PM

According to Artificial Analysis, it's much cheaper per task than 3.8 flash, 3$ for H xhigh vs 6-7$ for 3.8 medium-high. I don't understand how though, since AA says it has more output tokens per task.

netrem • yesterday at 6:32 PM

In the Gemini app it's replaced Flash. Lite is still there.

➕ show 1 reply
iamdelirium • yesterday at 6:36 PM

The fact that there is still a flash lite dropdown in Gemini points to them keeping the flash lite model family.

➕ show 2 replies
deaux • yesterday at 7:01 PM

> considerably higher than what anyone is paying today for 3.8 Flash or 3.5 Flash Lite or the deprecated 3.0/2.x Gemini models

It's cheaper than the last Pro models.