Believe it or not, the Pixel 9 series just celebrated its six-month launch-aversary. If you happened to pick up any of Google’s Pro-branded smartphones right at launch — August 22nd for the Pixel 9 Pro XL, early September for the Pro and Pro Fold — you’re also hitting a very different six-month celebration right now. You, like me, are halfway through your year’s worth of Gemini Advanced, something Google will be quick to tell you is a $240 value that you received for absolutely free.
Except, is it worth $240? With six months left on my Gemini Advanced subscription — along with the 2TB Google One storage plan it’s paired with — it’s the perfect time to consider whether or not I’ve gotten my (non-existent) money’s worth. My auto-renewal isn’t disabled yet, but I’m just not sure whether Google has done enough to convince me to shell out $20 a month. Let’s dig into exactly why Gemini Advanced feels so lackluster, and whether some crucial announcements at Google I/O might be enough to reel me back in.
5
Google hasn’t proved I need Gemini Advanced
Or even regular Gemini, really
Let’s put aside any and all concerns over environmental waste, economic bubbles, and obvious, outright cases of plagiarism — all of which, to be very clear, are very real problems affecting AI. Even taking these products at face value, I’m sitting here wondering when, exactly, is Google going to prove that I need to be paying for Gemini Advanced. Google’s entire marketing website divides its selling points into three topics (learn, work, code), but really, only the code section puts in any kind of effort to seem like it’s actually usable for anything.
To be very clear, Google’s landing page for Gemini Advanced does not actually spell out why I — or most people — would need this. Practically every selling point speaks in vague, jargon-heavy language, like “Access to our most capable models, including our new experimental model 2.0 Pro,” and the times in which Google does get more specific, it’s with relatively unimpressive phrasing like “Understand and analyze whole books, lengthy reports, and more with uploads of up to 1,500 pages.”
If Google wants me to pay for this, and AI is so expensive, they obviously do, where is the clear-cut, easy-to-understand explanation of why my $20 a month is getting put to good use? Nothing here feels like the sort of thing that is going to give me my gym membership’s worth of cash back. “Save hours on your research,” or “Effortless, tailored help just for you” — these are vague statements that don’t actually translate into any real-world examples, and I haven’t felt my experience with Gemini change in the time since my subscription went live. Something has to change, and it’s on Google to make those changes.
Related
Google Gemini vs. Gemini Advanced: All the key differences explained
What can Gemini Advanced do better and is it worth the price?
4
Gemini has a serious hallucination problem
Perhaps even more so than other AI chatbots
When it comes to the concept of shelling out every month for AI tools, hallucinations remain the other big problem. Maybe this is a boring reason not to consider sticking with Gemini Advanced, but in my testing, Google’s AI chatbot remains far more prone to hallucinations than, for example, ChatGPT. That’s not to say OpenAI’s platform is perfect — in some cases, its harder-to-spot hallucinations might actually be more dangerous — but if Google wants me to take its selling points seriously, I need to be able to trust it can actually analyze 1,500 page novels without slipping up in the process.
I don’t know if we’ll ever get there; frankly, hallucinations seem to be baked into the core of these products. But I do know that any time I use Gemini for more than the most basic of tasks, I need to fact-check every response I get in return. Just look at my recent Galaxy S25 Ultra review, in which Gemini — using Google’s cross-app actions — added non-existent Buffalo Bandits lacrosse games to my calendar. Android Authority writer Joe Maring saw the same response, and even got Gemini to admit to hallucinating the games with a little push. Until I start to see more success in trusting Gemini’s answers, I’m not sure why I’d hand over my hard-earned cash.
3
Don’t I have plenty of free AI options to choose from?
Like, including Gemini?
Call this the Spotify problem: Gemini Advanced has plenty of rivals, and most of them come with their own free tiers. Frankly, if I’m going to rely on a chatbot in this current age, I’m more likely to turn to ChatGPT’s free offering than use Gemini Advanced, which speaks volumes about both Google and OpenAI’s paid products. Anthropic offers a free tier for Claude, and Elon Musk’s Grok 3 is currently available to all users for free, if that’s something that, for some reason, actually interests you.
Basically, the amount of free AI options that exist on the market right now feel virtually endless. Yes, you can pay for more powerful, more specific models, but in testing both ChatGPT and Gemini on paid plans, I think these companies do a particularly bad job in convincing anyone that their more expensive offerings are actually worth it. I’d also echo Ed Zitron’s recent writing on just how mediocre something like OpenAI’s Deep Research tools are, which currently require a $200 per month plan just to test out.
That’s right, it’s not just Gemini — all of these companies are doing a bad job at convincing me why I should hand over my credit card information. Look, someday — maybe someday soon, if the VC market starts to dry up earlier than expected — these free AI offerings will slowly disappear, just as companies like Hulu eventually went full-paywall. But until then, if you have a typical level of interest in any genAI tool, I just don’t see why you’d opt to pay for one.
Related
5 reasons why I prefer Gemini Advanced over ChatGPT Plus
Gemini Advanced hits all the sweet spots for my use cases
2
The rest of the 2TB Google One plan doesn’t particularly interest me
But if you’re into it, more power to you
But Will, you finally say. Unlike OpenAI, Google actually bundles its Gemini Advanced toolset with a whole slate of extra features! Yes, Gemini’s paid tier is part of Google One’s 2TB plan, netting you a ton of cloud storage alongside a handful of other perks. Personally, I’m not sure I get much out of it. Gemini’s been shoehorned into places like Gmail and Docs, but all it’s done to date is get in my way (and, in my personal experience, break spellcheck and autocorrect within Google’s Word alternative). This seems to be Google’s big selling point, but really, I’m dying for my apps to feel a little less busy, not more.
Otherwise, I’m not sure I’m seeing what makes the $20 per month One plan worth it over the $10 per month plan that still offers 2TB of cloud storage. Yes, that undercuts competitors like Dropbox, and it still includes add-ons like unlimited Magic Editor edits, alongside other tangible rewards like longer Meet calls and livestreaming meetings on YouTube. Google even seems to know that anyone taking Gemini Advanced for a spin might not want to stick around, which is likely why it hides that $10/month plan once you’re at a higher tier. It almost makes it look like you have to stick to your Gemini subscription to keep your cloud storage — how insidious.
1
Aren’t we all tired of subscriptions?
I know I am
This problem isn’t exclusive to Gemini Advanced, but it’s worth bringing up whenever any company asks you to hit that subscribe button. Aren’t we tired, collectively, of recurring payments? I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but the last thing I’m looking for in my life is another monthly subscription sucking cash out of my bank account. Practically every app on my phone wants me to fork over some cash for extra features or access to a “better,” more rich experience, in some cases restoring functionality that used to be free. Well, I’m not into it.
If Google — or OpenAI, or Anthropic, or any other company with a listing on the Play Store — wants me to shell out for new features, it’s those individual actors who need to do the work in convincing me that it’s worth it. That’s a tall order when Netflix is trying to charge me $25 for 4K streaming, and you know that price is only going to keep going up.
Gemini Advanced doesn’t have me hooked yet
Six months into my time with Gemini Advanced, I just can’t see the benefit to sticking around as a paying customer. That’s bad news for Google, but the company does have time to turn things around. Google I/O is less than three months out now. With Android 16 potentially set for an I/O launch party and the Pixel 9a seemingly destined for an early spring launch, the slate is clean for Google to focus solely on its AI initiatives this year, to make it clear why anyone should care, let alone hand over cash on a monthly basis. Last year’s developer conference wasn’t particularly convincing; let’s see if 12 months made enough of a difference.
Related
Gemini Advanced: Everything you need to know about Google’s premium AI
Google’s premium AI explained