That's too long to be so far behind. This release looks like it puts them back in it but if they don't ship anything again for a year plus it's hard to imagine building on top of them and watching the world go by.
As others note, this is most relevant for us here, Google does not need to chase YC developers and the like. They can move more slowly, they have the size to do that. But it does suggest a lot of dysfunction given they have the world at their fingertips and couldn't seem to ship anything for a year.
Google should be dominating, but instead all we currently have is a disparate collection of consumer facing apps and a flash model that’s fast, clever and expensive.
Muse and Dots are doing what Google should have brought out last year, with their resources and know-how.
Meta was genius in coming up with a new name and offering Muse for free to start. They can upsell you once you see the value. Meanwhile I have 3 existing Google subscriptions to different services and from what I can tell, paying for one of the all in one subscriptions that includes Gemini would cost me a lot more.
the risk of randomly getting my email banned is way too high
That's why I've gone to using open models, they are getting there slowly. A bit much of hand-holding but that's fine by me. If a customer of mine decides to use Google's models, I will have them sign a disclaimer that I'm not responsible of them getting insta-banned or similar. I just can't recommend it.