Google is paywalling Argon behind Ultra just to push subscriptions

[u/Ok-Barracuda2333]

Google's rate limits are a complete joke compared to OpenAI right now, let alone Claude. It is crazy because it was the exact opposite a year ago, though that is a topic for another day.

Being slow, falling behind over the past six months, and lacking a true flagship model has made their Ultra tier one of the worst value subscriptions out there. I bet almost nobody is actually paying for it. Now that they finally managed to cook up a flagship model with decent benchmarks, they went with the most short-sighted marketing play possible. They locked Pro and Plus users out and made it an Ultra exclusive. I guess Pro users should thank Google for showing mercy by letting us use it inside their terrible Gemini app, while Plus users get nothing at all. The real cost here is alienating the vast majority of Pro and Plus subscribers, along with potential paying users.

Honestly, Google seems to have zero long-term vision with their go-to-market strategy. Desperate to steal market share from ChatGPT, they started by handing out way more freebies than they could actually afford. First it was the insanely generous free API tier that got nuked earlier this year. Then came the 6 to 12 months of free Pro bundled with Pixel phones, 12 months free for students, and the market getting flooded with 18-month Pro promos from Jio. These promos always last half a year to a year. By the time Google realized their compute and R&D budgets could not handle the load, those free accounts were already everywhere with more than half their time left.

So what does Google do? Pull the plug on the Jio partnership? They do not have the guts. Stop the student and Pixel freebies? Then they could not brag to executives about skyrocketing subscriber numbers. Instead, they went with a blanket nerf to rate limits across all paid tiers, leading up to how they are shafting Pro and Plus users today. The only reason they did not make a new "Max" tier is because they never handed out Ultra for free in bulk. If they had, I guarantee they would invent a new tier just to gatekeep the good stuff. This only makes people do the math, realize paying tens or hundreds of dollars for pathetic limits is a rip-off, and drives them straight to the gray market. You can blame the gray market deal hunters all you want, but Google created this mess. I refuse to believe nobody smart at Google saw this coming, especially after the Jio deal. Chasing short-term metrics for the suits pushed them into making these short-sighted decisions.

At the end of the day, subbing to Google Ultra just for Argon is really not worth it. Do not fall for the FOMO and impulse buy, especially since I hear the rate limits on Ultra are still tiny and nowhere near what Claude gives you for Opus 5.5 on their normal plans. Maybe after the Jio promo ends later this month and they stop handing out Pro like candy, Google will finally bring rate limits back to a usable level. Until then, there is no way I am paying full price for Google.

[u/Kooky_Awareness_5333]

Used it fine on pro and it used fuck all of my weekly limits honestly how many problems do you have that need that level of intelligence to crack????

[u/Additional-Avocado33]

I took a look at flash today and it's 10x slower then usual. I only dropped prompts down 20% in 4 hours as there so slow to deliver a prompt. First time I have ever ran 3 instances.

[u/Agreeable-Purpose-56]

Google forgot about the fact it lags competition.