Gemini’s Workspace Confusion

Google has a long, storied history of making things overly complex and confusing for their own paying Google Workspace customers. Jeff Jarvis has made many a rant over the years expressing this viewpoint on a number of features that Google has failed to deliver for Workspace customers.

Today I’d like to join Jeff and bring up a new one that I don’t think he’s mentioned: Google’s AI packaging.

Here’s what I want. At Ten2 Media, we use Google Workspace, which is largely great and comes with some added AI features, but I also want to grant a selected number of users additional AI quota, specifically in regards to using Gemini for coding. If you have looked into this, you’re already laughing. If you haven’t, you’ll soon find a tangled mess of Gemini plans, Vertex, Google Cloud Projects, Google Cloud Assist, and so many oddly phrased error messages when trying to use these tools.

Why is this so complex? Why is it a checkbox on the user’s Workspace settings? Why is it so tied to GCP and specific Google Cloud projects?

The easiest solution seems to be buying Claude Code subscriptions instead.