Your first point

> kind of surprised it was even offered and marketed given how painful it is to use. I thought it'd have to be damaging to the Gemini brand to get people to try it out, suffer painful UX then immediately stop using it.

is immediately explain by your second point

> Antigravity was also painful to use at launch where more queries failed then succeeded, however they've basically solved that now to the point where it's become my most used editor/IDE

Switching tools is easy right now. Some people pick a tool and stick with it, but it's common to jump from one to the other.

Many of us have the lowest tier subscriptions from a couple companies at the same time so we can jump between tools all the time.