Google's confidence-inspiring "pay-by-compute" policy launched at the 2026 I/O Developer Conference has just faced a global backlash from paid users.

Within just a few days of the new policy going live, platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) were flooded with complaints and criticism. Many programmers and multimedia creators who work intensively said the new policy was a "money-grabbing" experience—sometimes, working for just one or two hours, or having a few extra chats (longer chat history), would directly trigger a 5-hour cooldown, or even lock out your weekly quota entirely.

Facing this rapidly spreading public relations crisis, Varun Mohan, the director of Google DeepMind's AI programming workspace Antigravity, could not sit idly by. He made an emergency public statement today and rolled out a sincere "firefighting move."

Emergency Patches: Quota Directly Increased Permanently by 3 Times!

Due to the extremely strong backlash from developers and premium paid users, Google's team quickly implemented two quota increases in a short time, finally offering the following highly sincere compensation plan:

  • Quota Reset for All: For all current Pro and Ultra paid subscribers, the Gemini usage quota for this week has been completely reset. No matter if you were locked out before, you can now continue using it.

  • Permanent Quota Increase of 3 Times: Varun Mohan clearly stated that to allow heavy users and developers to seamlessly continue their workflow, the quota for Gemini in core development scenarios such as Antigravity will be permanently increased by 3 times.

  • Gift Package Sent Out: Google also offered a limited-time benefit to existing Google AI Ultra subscribers—directly receive a 100-dollar additional Antigravity bonus quota (available until May 25th) within the app, which will activate automatically after the planned quota is used up.

Currently, paid users around the world have started to receive pop-up notifications in their respective dashboards, prompting "Keep Building (Continue Building)," and the quota increase is being gradually applied in batches.

What Exactly Did the "Pay-by-Compute" Model Touch?

Why did this adjustment cause such a strong reaction? The problem lies in the underlying logic of the billing model.

Previously, Gemini simply calculated based on "how many prompts were input per day." However, the new policy introduced on May 17th incorporated the complexity of requests, specific features used (such as code execution), and most importantly, the "chat history length (Context Length)" into the quota calculation.

Underlying Pain Point:

In large model operations, the longer your conversation history, the more the "context compute power" needed for each new question increases exponentially. Programmers often need to maintain a context that lasts several hours and includes thousands of lines of code when debugging complex bugs. Under the new rules, this intensive interaction can instantly "burn through" the quota.

Although Google claims that the "pay-by-compute" model aims to distribute server resources more fairly and efficiently, the initial quota line was set too low, making Ultra users who paid high subscription fees become the "victims," even complaining, "Now I spend more time looking at the quota table than looking at my code."

Class Representative Summary

Varun Mohan admitted that the team had indeed underestimated the consumption speed of hardcore users in the initial quota setting, and promised to continue listening to community feedback.