It's to their detriment, also. Being told Gemini beats GPT-4 while withholding that what I'm trying out is not the model they're talking about would have me think they're full of crap. They'd be better off making it clear that this is not the one that surpasses GPT-4.

It really is. OpenAI has the Apple model of release - when it's announced the laptop is in you freaking hands 3 days later.

Google announces vaporware that's never going to come out, or something that will be out in 5 months. It's frustrating and very bad for their image in the LLM space.

This might be the best they can do to maintain any hope among nervous investors. That this may actually be the most rational play available to them would be incredibly sad.

And then six months later, it's gone because it's not on target for a $1B ARR and no one is getting promoted for something that's already launched.

I wonder if the "release" was done in spite of dev knowledge that it isn't really ready. Like "screw it, we want to attract eyeballs even though we know it's premature"

That wasn't my experience with OpenAI. Their availability has been a mixed bag.

Just because Apple offers a particular laptop, doesn't mean they won't be sold out. If we want to complete the analogy.