So just ignore the reality, that Gemini (and yes even 3.8 Flash) is worst of all major LLMs across most metrics? But that's fine, because reasons?
If metrics measured what most people need from an LLM, it's competitive, IMO, and with their TPU chips, it's probably economically competitive.
I forget the name but I see one LLM chatbox that looked like one of those old world news media websites plastered from top to bottom with jumpy obnoxious ads. It did offer some good models for free. I honestly might even consider using it if I could remember what it was called.
If they turned Gemini into that today I think people would just laugh, shake their head and close the app.