Gemini 4 Argon will never be a replacement for Gemini 2.5 Pro. It’s use case is entirely different, So Google should not deprecate the Gemini 2.5 Pro Model and If they have resource constraints, they should limit the RPD to 10 for 2.5 Pro Model. This is the best possible solution!
I suggest deprecating Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview (not “stable”!) instead.
“2.5 pro vibes”
“need to move compute to newer models! Onward!”
– Yeah. Just continue to move fast, unnecessarily break things all the time, race to the bottom, betray the loyal users who contribute to the further development of your products with their feedback and usage data. Myopic.
On the one hand, models are being taken away from paying users; on the other, AI is being squeezed into all sorts of applications, whether users want it or not. Those in charge at Google evidently fail to consider that this approach is not going down well with a great many users at all – and that Google wouldn’t be the first company to fail because its products were no longer accepted after the feedback from ordinary users had been ignored for too long.
But I might just as well be talking to a wall. Gemini 3 Pro called this “Cassandra syndrome”.
Gemini 4 Argon can never match the writing style of Gemini 2.5 Pro. I tried it, It is not up to the mark. For other use case, It is doing great!
Gemini 4 Argon is clearly a Fable-tier model. Gemini 2.5 Pro should be brought back.
The discount on Gemini 4 Pro Argon will end on November 31st, and I cannot afford it. Furthermore, the Gemini 4 Pro’s current server is unstable, displaying 503 and 524 errors.
Please deprecate Gemini 3.1 Pro instead of Gemini 2.5 Pro. Gemini 2.5 Pro deserves to be treated as a legacy model, just like Claude Opus3. Even Claude and OpenAI kept their old models; is Google going to ignore user feedback?
I believe Google is well aware that going all-in on a single direction is very dangerous. None of the subsequent models can replace Gemini 2.5 Pro. Please keep 2.5 Pro available or make it open-source.
The Product Lead @Logan_Kilpatrick doesn’t care about user feedback!
See his comment on this issue - https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleAIStudio/s/4676w4PkIu
He seems like not care much about this issue. Also, if you guys are active on reddit kindly post your opinions out there.
Gemini 4 Argon is not the Pro model of 4 Series. It is different from Pro Model as per my knowledge! So, Google will release Pro Model of 4 Series soon! But anyway, no model would be good or best than the Gemini 2.5 Pro in Writing Style.
That’s a questionable claim. As far as I can remember, the best model for creative writing (if that’s what you mean) for me personally was the Gemini 3.0 Pro, which was discontinued in March, leaving only the 3.1 Pro, which is less suited for creative writing.
I didn’t get the Opportunity to use Gemini 3.0 Pro, Hence I can’t comment on it! But from the above discussion many are accepting that Gemini 2.5 Pro is the best for creative writing!
Yes, I agree. In terms of style for creative writing, Gemini 2.5 Pro was much better than Gemini 3.1 Pro. Although, for example, it seems to me that 3.1 Pro handles large PDFs a little better than 2.5 Pro.
We also want to move onward, but there needs to be a sufficiently capable replacement for Gemini 2.5 Pro first. What meaningful differences exist between 3.5 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.7 Flash and 3.8 Flash? These rapidly released models feel highly homogeneous. Why isn’t this frequent iteration of near-identical variants considered a waste of compute resources? What has happened internally at Google after Shazeer’s departure?
4Argon has been out for half a month, yet it still isn’t viable as a generally available productivity model. Meanwhile, how much quota has Google tightened for its sake? How many buttons for legacy models have been removed?
In reality, the reception for 4Argon hasn’t been particularly positive—far from rave reviews, it’s been quite mixed.
In fact, yes, I have encountered severe AI hallucinations across every single one of my current use cases with 4Argon.
Google is visibly radiating anxiety and chaos. It has already made numerous poor decisions—failing to achieve what it wanted while wrecking its existing ecosystem. I think it’s time to calmly reconsider the risks and destructiveness of going all-in.
Anthropic kept Opus 3; Google should likewise retain Gemini 2.5 Pro, which holds unique value and continues to have steady user demand.
I saw a post on X:
“Google has all the data, the infrastructure, and some of the best engineers in the world. So why does Gemini still struggle to become a developer’s first choice?”
I saw a lot of replies:
“Because great infrastructure doesn’t automatically create developer trust. One broken workflow can outweigh a thousand benchmark wins.”
"Having the best infrastructure doesn’t guarantee the best developer experience. Reliability, workflow integration, and trust matter more than raw model capabilities alone."
"Google’s product graveyard is the whole answer. Trust is a feature."
"Developers stick with whatever behaved the same last month, I care more about consistency than about the top score."
"Devs won’t rebuild their whole workflow on something that might get sunset in two years."
At the same time, I also saw this:
“Best engineers and researchers left. They got a few high ranking researchers trapped and muted, bunch of politicians and middle managers running the show and a whole army of H1b and new hires who are excited to work there. And it’s all silos on top of silos, corplighting and hush culture. Google is done, although it will take years to decompose due to sheer size and inertia.”
Oh, music to my ears.
<https//arxiv.org/abs/2609.16907>
Quantitative analysis in this paper demonstrates that disruptions to AI relationships are associated with measurable changes in psychosocial outcomes.
Across all events, anxiety/stress, suicidality, and grief increased immediately following the disruption.
As AI systems continue to evolve, relational continuity should be taken into consideration when evaluating, communicating, and supporting major platform changes.
Yet Google clearly turns a blind eye to this, blindly inflicting normalized, widespread trauma.
Now that this paper has been posted on the developer forum, it means Google employees will see it and should escalate it.
If Google still refuses to restore the 2.5 Pro option it abruptly removed from AI Studio and continues to push forward with the deprecation of 2.5 Pro, it will mean Google is suspected of knowingly and intentionally inflicting trauma.Where is your duty of care? Whatever happened to …
2 days ago, I sent an email to some Googlers. It was automatically rejected by some recipient addresses – but not by all of them.
to: Christopher Patnoe
cc: Marian Croak, Koray Kavukcuoglu, James Manyika, Iason Gabriel, Helen King, Petar Veličković
[…]
Today, I am reaching out regarding an issue of profound urgency: the abrupt, unannounced deprecation of “stable” AI models – most recently Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash (not only in Google AI Studio, but – according to some user reports – also if they try to access Gemini 2.5 Pro directly via API) followed just days ago by the sudden removal of Gemini 3.7 Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash without prior warning or transition periods. [1] [2]
When model retirements are publicly brushed off by product leadership as mere „vibes“ yielding to compute reallocation, Google overlooks a critical reality: For a significant community of neurodivergent users (particularly those with autism/Asperger’s) and individuals living with severe chronic illness (such as ME/CFS), these language models function as vital cognitive prosthetics, external working memory, and indispensable routine anchors. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [16]
For individuals on the autism spectrum, predictability and cognitive routine consistency are essential to daily functioning and stability. Abruptly snatching away a calibrated cognitive partner induces severe psychological distress, obsessive-compulsive flare-ups, debilitating anxiety, and cognitive crashes. I am not an isolated voice. In response to my contributions on the Google AI Developer Forum, another user reached out privately, confirming the exact same agonizing impact.
This distress is compounded by documented platform opacity:
- Silent Swaps and Downgrades: Prompts are frequently and silently down-routed to cheaper, lower-capability tiers (such as Flash-Lite) without explicit consent, a practice widely reported and documented across developer communities and the press (e.g., Reddit r/GeminiAI reports on silent downgrades mid-conversation, and the recent introduction of the non-transparent „Gemini Auto“ routing layer). [18] [19]
- Systemic Billing & Access Traps: While I successfully established a verified paid API billing account in May, Google’s forced migration to prepayment in late summer broke functionality: […]
To reconcile Google’s stated commitments to Accessibility and Human-Centered AI with developer realities, I urge you to implement the following three points:
1. Establish a Dedicated ‘Legacy & Research API’
Google should provide a persistent, paid access tier for deprecated GA models (beginning with the Gemini 2.5 family, including Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash, gemini-2.5-flash-preview-09-2025, gemini-2.5-flash-image-preview, Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, gemini-2.5-flash-lite-preview-09-2025):
- Scientific & Cultural Preservation: AI models are milestone artifacts. Deleting them destroys longitudinal research and human-AI interaction studies. [3] [4] [6] [16]
- Pragmatic Terms/ Non-Production/ Non-Agentic: Access can be explicitly bound to terms of service prohibiting commercial production deployments or autonomous agent loops; this tier would be purely for longitudinal interaction research, cognitive scaffolding, and qualitative evaluation.
- Minimal Compute Footprint: Restrict access to strict rate limits (e.g., 1 RPM, or 1 request per 5–10 minutes for Gemini 2.5 Pro) with no requirement for Zero Data Retention (ZDR), rendering server strain virtually negligible.
Precedent exists: Anthropic maintains legacy research endpoints and keeps Claude 3 Opus accessible for subscribers.
2. Honor and Expand Stated Deprecation Policies (Minimum 60-Day Grace Period)
- Enforce Existing Commitments: Google must adhere to its own published standards. While official documentation promises at least a 2-week notice for Previews and established planning windows for GA endpoints, recent actions completely violated this: Gemini 3.7 Flash and 3.5 Flash were abruptly removed from Google AI Studio on October 8/9 with zero days of prior notice and forced automated re-routing.
- Adopt Industry Best Practices: A 2-to-4-week window is fundamentally insufficient for cognitive accessibility, assistive stability, and research continuity. Google should align with Anthropic’s policy of guaranteed 60-day advance notice for stable endpoints (or OpenAI’s 6-month roadmap).
- Graceful Transitions in UI: Model upgrades within consumer interfaces (Gemini App) and Google AI Studio must offer transparent transition periods rather than overnight, disruptive UI erasures.
For ordinary power users, abrupt deprecations are an operational nuisance. For vulnerable individuals relying on these models as cognitive scaffolds, they are destabilizing, toxic, and exclusionary.
3. Absolute Routing Transparency Across All Platforms
- Zero Silent Swaps: Eliminate involuntary mid-session down-routing and undisclosed dynamic throttling across all Google interfaces – including Google AI Studio, the Gemini consumer web/mobile apps, AI Overviews, and AI Mode in Google Search.
- Deterministic Verification: Users and developers must receive unambiguous metadata confirming the exact model checkpoint that processed each generation. Historically unannounced shifts – such as when, right at the beginning of this year, the flash-latest alias began silently executing gemini-3-flash-preview (revealed by the sudden appearance of thinking blocks absent in gemini-2.5-flash-preview-09-2025) – severely undermine technical trust.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss these accessibility considerations and provide further data on neurodivergent AI interaction.
Sincerely,
Nervli
‘Multimodal dense human model with built-in immutable high-thinking’
Systems Analyst, Independent AI Researcher & Artist
(Clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome & ME/CFS)
[…]
Note: This email was drafted and translated with the assistance of Gemini 3.8 Flash (high), which also assisted in identifying the relevant leadership in accessibility, AI ethics, and research to ensure this reached the appropriate stakeholders. I had to repeatedly ask Gemini 3.8 Flash to use the `concise_search` tool instead of relying on its training data or making up something, and additionally had to use the classic ‘ten blue links’ Google Search. In my experience, this would not have been necessary with either of the Gemini 2.5 Flashs or Gemini 2.5 Flash Lites.
References:
[1] Ongoing Gemini 2.5 Pro thread: The Gemini 2.5 Pro option in AI Studio has disappeared
[2] Request to bring back Gemini 2.5 Pro: Bring back Gemini 2.5 Pro UI Access on AI Studio or Admit the Hardware Constraint
[3] Gemini 2.5 Pro preservation proposal: Proposal: Model Escrow and Sunset Open-Weight Release for Gemini 2.5
[4] Gemini 2.5 Pro preservation requests: Gemini 2.5 Pro is a Unique, Irreplaceable Voice for the Humanities – Please Don’t Let It Disappear
[5] Gemini 2.5 Flash cannot be replaced by 3.5 Flash Lite: Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is NOT an adequate replacement for Gemini 2.5 Flash
[6] Gemini 2.5 Flash preservation requests: Please don't discontinue Gemini 2.5 Flash
[7] Standard copy-paste answers, no further explanation: Please bring back the 2.5 pro
[8] Gemini 2.5 deprecation dates confusion: Gemini-2.5-pro returns "no longer available to new users" — contradicts official deprecation date (Oct 16, 2026)
[9] Gemini 2.5 Pro removed, no previous explanation: Am I not considered an active user? Why did my 2.5 Pro option disappear?
[10] Gemini 2.5 Pro missing, no explanation: [CRITICAL BUG] Google AI Studio UI Brick: Gemini 2.5 Pro Missing & Voice/Audio Models Completely Glitching
[11] Gemini 2.5 Pro missing, no explanation: Gemini 2.5 Pro Issue - Model Unavailability
[12] Gemini 3.1 Pro weaker than Gemini 2.5 Pro: Gemini 3.1 vs 2.5 Pro: weaker reasoning, instruction-following, and long-document coverage
[13] Gemini 3 vs. 2.5 regression: Gemini 3 significantly worse thant 2.5 Pro at long context. Temperature likely to blame
[14] Gemini 3 vs. 2.5 regression: Gemini 3 review after 1 month: inconsistent at best, poor at worst compared to Gemini 2.5
[15] Gemini 3 vs. 2.5 regression: Feedback: Gemini 3 Pro Preview - Significant regression in Reasoning, Context Retention, and Safety False Positives compared to 2.5
[16] gemini-2.5-preview-09-2025 deprecation complaints: https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1r5lub9/gemini25flashpreview0925_depreciated_on_tuesday/
[17] Gemini 3 performance degradation, 2025: https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1pb1sr3/gemini_3_is_pulling_the_same_dynamic_downgrade/
[18] Silent routing/ swaps: https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1voxgoe/why_does_gemini_silently_downgrade_from_pro_to/
[19] Silent routing/ swaps: https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1tp0grx/geminis_silent_downgrades_are_unbearable/
[20] Gemini 3.7 Flash removed without announcement: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingWithAI/comments/1x26bs0/damn_ai_studio_has_removed_gemini_37_flash/
I only have one question now: Why do Gemini 3.5 Flash and 3.8 Flash get roughly the same service lifespan as Gemini 2.5 Pro, which is a full stable Pro model?
I agree with this. They should keep Gemini 2.5 pro as their legacy pro model on AI Studio, 4 Argon is better as a Fable Equivalent for complex workflows.