This is bad practice across the board IMO. There seems to be an idea that this builds anticipation for new products. Sounds good in a PowerPoint presentation by an MBA but doesn't work in practice. Six months (or more!) after joining a waitlist, I'm not seeing it for the first time, so I don't really care when yet another email selling me something hits my inbox. I may not even open the email. This could be mitigated somewhat by at least offering a demo, but that's rare.

Likely they have limited capacity and are alloting things for highest paying and strategic customers

As someone who worked in Google Cloud's partnerships team, the way the Early Access Program, not to mention the Alpha --> Beta --> GA launch process for AI products, works, is really dysfunctional. Inevitably what happens is that a few strategic customers or partners get exceptionally early (Alpha) access and work directly with the product team to refine things, fix bugs and iron out kinks. This is great and the way market driven product development should work.

The issues arise with the subsequent stagegate graduation processes, requirements and launches to less restricted markets. It's inconsistent, the QoS pre-GA customers receive is often spotty and the products come with no SLAs, and -- just like Gmail on the consumer side -- things frequently stay in EAP/Beta phase for years with no reliable timeline for launch. ... and then often they're killed before they get to GA, even though they may have been being used by EAP customers for upwards of 1-2 years.

I drafted a new EAP model a few years ago when Google's Cloud AI & Industry Solutions org was in the process of productizing things like the retail recommendation engine and Manufacturing Data Engine, and had all the buy-ins from stakeholders on the GTM side ... but the CAIIS GM never signed off. Subsequently, both the GM & VP Product of that org have been forced out.

In my opinion, this is something Microsoft does very well and Google desperately needs to learn. If they pick up anything from their hyperscaler competitors it should be 1) how to successfully become a market driven engineering company from MSFT and 2) how to never kill products (and not punish employees for only doing KTLO work) from AMZN.

So tactical, wow. Meanwhile OpenAI and others will eat their lunch again.

Agreed. OpenAI also doesn't need to grock with Shareholders fearing a GDPR like-fine. Sadly the larger you are the bigger the pain is from small mistakes.

One PM in 2005 knocked it out of the park with Gmail and every Google PM since then has cargo-culted it.

I'm generally an excited early adopter, but this kills my excitement immediately. I don't know if Gemini is out (or which Gemini is out) because I've associated Google with "you can't try their stuff", so I've learned to just ignore everything about Gemini.

Google is really good at diluting any possible anticipation hardcore users might have for new stuff they do. 10 years ago I loved when there was a big update to one of their Android apps and I could sideload the apk from the internet to try it out early. Then they made all those changes A/B tests controlled by server side flags that would randomly turn themselves on and off, and there was no way to opt in or out. That was one of the (many) moves that contributed to my becoming disenchanted with Android.

I think the way to understand this is to realize that this isn’t targeted at a Hacker News audience and they don’t care what we think. The world doesn’t revolve around us.

What’s the goal? Maybe, being able to work with partners without it being a secret project that will inevitably leak, resulting in inaccurate stories in the press. What are non-goals? Driving sales or creating anticipation, like a movie trailer or an Apple product launch.

So they have to announce something, but most people don’t read Hacker News and won’t even hear about it until later, and that’s fine with them.

There is a Gemini service that you can use with your Google account, but it's kind of meh as it repeats your input, makes all sorts of assumptions. I am confused as well about the version. There's a link to another premium version (1.5?) on its page, to which I don't have access to without completing a quest which likely ends with a credit card input. That kills it for me.

Or can't use ... I have a newish work account and downloaded Gemini on a Pixel 8 Pro and get "Gemini isn't available" and "Try again later" with no explanation of why not and when.

This is it. Not a phone app, did not install anything. Maybe your account is not old enough? You're not missing anything anyway.

https://gemini.google.com/

Look, it now has totally useless suggestions like it was trained on burned out woke IT workers. I asked it about the weather, sea temperature and wave height and period in Malaga, which is much less boring than the choices it came up with. First it tried to talk me out of it waving away responsibility, then it provided useful climate data, which I would have wasted too much time doing a Google search on. I guess it's good for checking on the weather if you can put up with the waivers. Also it knows fishing for garfish in Denmark in May is not a total waste of your time, a great way to experience local culture and a sustainable activity.

I also asked it about the version: "I am currently running on the Gemini Pro 1.01.5 model".

After the complete farce that was the last 90% faked video of their tech, maybe just give us a text box we can talk to the thing and see it working ourselves next time.

Like it's shocking to me, are management really so clueless they don't realize how far behind they are? This isn't 2010 Google, your not the company that made your success anymore and in a decade the only two sure fire things that will still exist are android and chrome. Search, Maps, Youtube are all in precarious positions that the right team could dethrone.

Its because they don't want you to actually use it and see how far behind they are compared to other companies. These announcement are meant to placate investors. "See, we are doing a lot of SotA AI too".

You might be right, but other things from Google tell the same story. For example, I recently tried to get ahold of Pixel 8 Pro. Had to import one from UK, and when I did, turns out that new feature of using thermometer on humans isn't available outside of USA. It doesn't even seem that process to certificate it outside of USA is in play. Google and sales/support just aren't a thing like with Apple, as a contrast. Which is a total shame. I know Google is strong, if not strongest in the game of tech, they just need to get their act together and I believe in them succeeding in that, but sales and support was never in their DNA. Not sure if that can be changed.

I'm more than happy to transfer my monthly $20 to google from OpenAI, on top of my youtube and google one subscription. It's up to Google to take it.

Remember when Gmail was new and you needed an invite to join? I guess Google is stuck in 2004.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I bought a Gmail invite on eBay for $6 when it was still invite-only.

That's not entirely a waste, it would have given you a better chance for an email address you wanted.

Yeah. I ended up with an eight letter @gmail.com because I dithered, but if I'd signed up by any means necessary when I'd first heard of it, I would've gotten a four letter one.

I bartered on gmailswap.com, sending someone a bicentennial 50¢ US coin in exchange for an invite.

The envelope made it to the recipient, but the coin fell out in transit, because I was young and had no idea how to mail coinage. They graciously gave me the invite anyway.

Ah, to be young and clueless about coinage mailing.

Yielding a priceless anecdote

Nothing to be ashamed of. I think I might have bought a Google Wave invite a couple of years later :/

shrug It probably gave you months of fun.

Well they did promise unlimited space - remember how it kept growing? I guess until it didn't...

But still, compared to Hotmail etc the free storage space (something like 1GB vs 10MB) was well worth $6

They don't seem to remember when that literally sunk Google+ because people had no use for a social network without their friends on it.

It lets the company control the narrative, without the distraction of fifty tech bloggers test-driving it and posting divergent opinions or findings. Instead, the conversation is anchored to what the company claims about the product.

It's interesting that it's the opposite of the gaming industry. There, because the reviewers dictate the narrative, the industry is better at ferreting out bogus claims. On the flip side, loud voices sometimes steamroll over decent products because of some ideological vendetta.

Totally agree with this. I can see the desire to show off, but I don't understand how anyone can believe this is good marketing strategy. Any initial excitement I get from reading such announcements will be immediately extinguished when I discover I can't use the product yet. The primary impression I receive of the product is "vaporware." By the time it does get released I'll already have forgotten the details of the announcement, lost enthusiasm, and invested my time in a different product. When I'm choosing between AI services, I'll be thinking "no, I can't choose Gemini Pro 1.5 because it's not available yet, and who knows when it will be available or how good it'll be." Then when they make their next announcement, I'll be even less likely to give it any attention.

They can't do that because only they are the incorruptible stewards empowered with the ability to develop these models, making them accessible to the unwashed masses would be irresponsible!

The victim complex on this topic is getting really old.

They’re an enterprise software company doing an enterprise sales motion.

If that was true, they wouldn't have named it Gemini 1.5 to follow the half-point increment of ChatGPT, they desperately want "people" to care about their product to gain back their mindshare.

Anthropic's Claude targets mostly business use cases and you don't see them write self-congratulating articles about Claude v2.1, they just pushed the product.

Mindshare is part of enterprise sales, yes.

I work at a very large company and everyone knows about ChatGPT and Gemini (in part because we for our sins have a good chunk of GCP stuff), but I doubt anyone here not doing some LLM-flavored development has ever even heard of Anthropic, let alone Claude.

And look at how well it's going for Claude. Their primary claim to fame is being called "an annoying coworker" and that's it.

Why would anyone look to form a contract with Anthropic right now? I'd say they're in danger here, because their models and offerings don't have clear value propositions to customers.

Claude 2.1 certainly got a news post when it was released: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-2-1

Seems reasonably similar in tone to the Google post.

> They’re an enterprise software company

Really? Someone ought to tell them.

And region based. Yawn.

100%, I can't even use Imagen despite being an early tester of Vertex.

I have access and will share some learnings soon

and not having to wait months if you live in EU

What's worse is that I can't seem to find a way to let Google know where I actually live (as opposed to where I am temporarily traveling, what country my currently inserted SIM card is from etc). And apparently there is no way to do this at all without owning an Android device!

Apple at least lets me change this by moving my iTunes/App Store account, which is its own ordeal and far from ideal, but at least there's a defined process: Tell us where you think you live, provide a form of payment from that place, maybe we'll believe you.

Yeah Google aggressively uses geolocation throughout their services, regardless of your language settings. The flipside of that is that it's really easy to access the latest Gemini or whatever by just using a VPN.

Wait, does that mean if I subscribe to Gemini Pro in country A where it's available (e.g. the US) but travel to Europe, I can't use it?

I'm really frustrated by Google's attitude of "we know better where you are than you do". People travel sometimes and that's not the same thing as moving!

I signed up for all of their AI products when I was in the US, some of them work while I'm out of country some don't. I can't tell what the rule is...

I really, really hate all of these geo heuristics. Sure, don't advertise services to people outside of your market, I get that. Do ask for a payment method from that country too to provide your market-specific pricing if you must.

But once I'm a paying customer, I want to use the thing I'm paying for from where I am without jumping through ridiculous hoops!

The worst variant of this I've seen is when you can neither use nor cancel the subscription from outside a supported market.

To be clear, I didn't pay for any of them. I just signed up for early access to every product that uses some form of ML that can remotely be called "AI"...

Once I got accepted, some of them work outside of the US and some don't

Eh, I think it's about as bad as the OpenAI method of officially announcing something and then "continuously rolling it out to all subscribers" which may be anything between a few days and months.

Yeah compared to e.g. Apple’s ‘here’s our new iWidget 42 pro, you can buy it now’ it’s at best disappointing.

Apple is good about only announcing real products you can buy. They don't do tech demos. It's always, "here's a problem. the new apple watch solves it. here're five other things the watch does. $399."

Apple is indeed masterful at advertising. Google, somewhat ironically, is really bad at it.

Apple is masterful at product, not just the advertising part. Google builds cool technology then fails and the product side.

I agree that Apple does a better job, but wasn't Apple Vision Pro announced 240 days before you could get it? I think it's a pretty safe bet that Gemini 1.5 (or something better) will be available anyone who wants to use it in the next 240 days.

AI software release cycles are incredibly short right now. Every month, there is some major development released in a usable right now form.

The first of it's type AR/VR hardware has, understandably, a longer release cycle. Also, Apple announced early to drive up developer interest.

AVP was the exception than norm.

Apple aggressively keeps products under wraps before launch fires employees and vendors for leaking any sort of news to the press .

Also an hardware product that is miles ahead of competition in terms of components and also needs complex setup workflow (for head and eyes) something apple has not done before being 7-8 months after announcing is not really comparable with a SaaS API in terms of delays

The verdict is not yet out on the Vision Pro but otherwise your point stands.

I believe this is a standard practice in Google whenever they need to launch a change expected to consume huge resources and they cannot reasonably predict the demand. Though I agree that this is a bad PR practice; waitlist should be considered as a compromise, not a PR technique.

These announcements are mainly for investors and other people interested in planning purposes. It's important to know the roadmap. More information is better.

I get that it's frustrating not to be able to play with it immediately, but that's just life. Announcing things in advance is still a valuable service for a lot of people.

Plus tons of people have been claiming that Google has somehow fallen behind in the AI race, so it's important for them to counteract that narrative. Making their roadmap more visible is a legitimate strategy for that.

I wrote off the PS5 because of waitlists. I was surprised to learn just yesterday that they are now actually, honestly purchasable (what I would consider "released").

I guess I let my original impression anchor my long-term feelings about the product. Oh well.

It's probably going to be dead/deprecated in a year, so maybe there's a silver lining to how hard it is to get to use the service. I, for one, wouldn't "build with Gemini".

I don't think I've ever engaged with a product after "joining their waitlist". By the time they end up utilizing that funnel, competitors have already released feature upgrades or new products cannibalizing their offering.