Gemini has fallen behind for almost a year.
Recently, Gemini has been making moves. First came the Gemini 4 leak—whether it’s actually good is another matter, but it definitely made a splash. Right after that, Antigravity integrated the freshly released Claude OPUS 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5. Then yesterday came another piece of news: Google is tightening access to its Gemini models:
| Plan | Flash-Lite | Flash | Pro | Deep Think |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Retained | Removed | Removed | None |
| Google AI Plus | Retained | Retained | Removed | None |
| Google AI Pro | Retained | Retained | Retained | Added |
| Google AI Ultra | Retained | Retained | Retained | Retained |
In other words, with this change, the free tier of Gemini is basically an enhanced search engine.
I’ve been using Gemini all along. Although it isn’t my primary model most of the time, I still turn to it habitually for research, keyword analysis, and the like—after all, backed by Google, it has a natural edge in these areas.
I’ve run many comparisons over the years. For market research, competitor analysis, and keyword research, Gemini beats both ChatGPT and Claude. On top of that, Gemini also has a better understanding than the other two of how a website should be built.
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Notes on indie products, AI tools, growth, and engineering.
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