Gemini Shows Google's Change in Revenue Strategy

Happy Thursday folks,

Google’s changing a bunch of names again but we promise this time it’s really to make it simpler. And also masks a change in Google strategy unseen since the 1990s.

That’s there for everyone. If you’re on the paid plan you’ll also see a writeup about a new lightweight set of AR glasses that look like glasses, further thoughts on Disney’s streaming startegy as well as what the heck they’re doing with Epic.

Have a great one y’all!

Tom

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Google has made official what developer Dylan Russel found in Google's ChangeLog on Monday. Google Bard has changed names to Gemini. Google also changed the name of DuetAI in Google Workspace to Gemini. And it released a Gemini app for Android that can replace Google Assistant. So, there are some name changes and some new products. Let's summarize.

Name Changes

- Google Bard - the chatbot similar to ChatGPT is now called Gemini.

- Google Duet AI which helps folks in Google Docs is now called Gemini.

New Products

- Gemini for Android. An app that gives you access to Gemini and can replace Google Assistant if you want it to.

- Gemini Advanced - which gives you access to the more powerful Gemini Ultra model. It comes as part of the new Google One AI Premium plan which is $20 a month. It includes everything from the $10 a month Google One Premium Plan, along with Gemini Advanced availability in Gmail, Docs and More.

Other

- Google app for iOS gets a Gemini toggle switch to access Gemini features.

- Gemini coming to more locations in English and expanding to availability in Japanese and Korean.

And just for some more name confusion, let me reiterate the name of the models and where you can access them.

Gemini Nano - an on-device version of Gemini available for developers to use in apps. Available in some Pixel 8 pro features like Summarize.

Gemini Pro - The version of Gemini you are most likely to encounter, such as in Bard or the Search Generative Experience

Gemini Ultra - The most advanced version of Gemini available in Gemini Advanced which is available in the Google One AI Premium subscription plan.

How good is it? Early returns are that Google is finally on par with OpenAI at equivalent levels. So good enough. How private is it? Not as much as you may want. Your conversations are stored for three years in order to let Google engineers use anonymized versions of your conversations to improve the models. Google writes, “Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine learning technologies.” That's pretty similar to other chatbot makers out there, including OpenAI.

It would be fun and easy to go down the rabbit hole of poking fun at Google for their horrible history and present in the field of naming things. But instead, I want to point out that under the rather ridiculous naming conventions is the new future of Google. Subscriptions. YouTube made a big deal about its subscription growth both on YouTube and YouTube TV. Gemini showing up as an alternate to Search in the Google app for iOS indicates that Google sees subscription revenue as just as important as ad revenue, at least in the future.