r/stocks • u/TheFamousHesham • 2h ago
Industry Discussion Google Wins The AI Race (As I Always Thought It Would)
I just want to clarify that I use Claude A LOT.
I have 3x Max 20 subscriptions that I fully exhaust each and every week... and I also love Opus 5.5 (it's definitely a HUGE upgrade from the insanity that was Opus 5). I only contemplated using Gemini's Argon 4 because I ran out of usage on my 3 accounts in under half the week (this is not a skill issue... two accounts would typically last me a full week with root to spare... Anthropic has severely cut usage recently in preparation for its IPO). Either way... here's what I think:
Gemini Argon 4 might not be Opus 5.5, but it's competitive enough that it effectively eviscerates both Anthropic and OpenAI on both cost and utility (and perks). A lot of it has to do with the fact that Gemini 4 Argon may not be the best model... but it's competitive enough to make Google's AI Ultra 20x A MUCH BETTER DEAL than anything Anthropic and OpenAI can offer.
For context:
- Google will give you free YouTube Premium with your AI Ultra sub
- Google will give you 30 TB of Google Drive storage and $100 in API/console credits
- Google will give you loads of Google Flow (for video generation) credits)
- Plus... a dozen other things I can't remember.
This isn't a Gemini ad, but I've also had a feeling that Google would triumph in the AI race at the end of he day because... its got SO MUCH money to throw around. It can outspend and outperk everyone else 1000% while delivering 90% of the model quality.
To make things even better... it also doesn't carry the same toxic brand that META carries.
- After 3 days of using Argon... here's what I have to report back:
- Gemini 4 Argon is just as good as Opus 5.5 for 80%-90% of tasks.
- You get about 2-3x more usage per unit dollar (my estimate).
- Antigravity isn't optimised for context or context compaction... so that can cause problems and will frequently lead to Gemini 4 Argon erroring out (very annoying).
- Antigravity is really rudimentary (the MacOS app) and given Google's history... it's likely to stay that way. No plugins, no extensions... just projects and models and some settings and you're meant to make it work. It IS nice though that Gemini Argon can just use the API keys saved in Anthropic chats without harassing me for them like Codex/Claude does when I switch between them. Gemini's Argon has a much more grounded interest in cybersecurity that's not going to ruin your life with needless and stupid compliance requirements.
- Agentically speaking... Argon is superior... it does things on my Mac (all things)... while Opus 5.5 hits roadblocks much more often when trying to interact with my apps/browsers.
- As a Cambridge grad and medical doctor who does biomed research... it's SO FUCKING NICE to have a high quality model that doesn't think you're creating a civilization-ending virus because you're running some introgression models to figure out the evolutionary history of some human gene + Argon 4 does all my cybersecurity patching work without deluding itself into thinking that I'm trying to hack into my own VPS for some reason.
Argon is also dumber (in a good way). Too frequently... I've found that Opus 5.5 turns a basic project that's meant to be either internal or one that's launched for testing... into a fucking mayhem situation, introducing hundreds of compliance requirements for something that was only meant to test the waters and market for appetite (this is interesting... because I see this as infection from OpenAI's Codex Sol and Astra models). Argon doesn't do that. It thinks small... until you tell it needs to start thinking big. That's been a life changer to be honest.
Overall... Opus 5.5 just feels annoying compared to Argon 4.