[bethekind]

This is draconian.

> Our investigation specifically confirmed that the use of your credentials within the third-party tool “open claw” for testing purposes constitutes a violation of the Google Terms of Service [1]. This is due to the use of Antigravity servers to power a non-Antigravity product. I must be transparent and inform you that, in accordance with Google’s policy, this situation falls under a zero tolerance policy, and we are unable to reverse the suspension. I am truly sorry to share this difficult news with you.

[torginus]

Isn't the reason companies are doing this because they're offering tokens at a discount, provided they're spent through their tooling?

Considering the tremendous amount of tokens OpenClaw can burn for something that has nothing to do with sofware development, I think it's reasonable for Google to not allow using tokens reserved for Antigravity. I don't think there's such a restriction if you pay for the API out of pocket.

[jacquesm]

> Isn't the reason companies are doing this because they're offering tokens at a discount, provided they're spent through their tooling?

Then maybe they should charge for that instead of banning accounts?

Google decided on their own business plan without any guns to their backs. If they decide to create a plan that is subsidized that's entirely on them.

[mark_l_watson]

I agree. As others have mentioned here, the authenticate with AntiGravity web popup clearly says that this authentication is only to be used with Google products.

How can Claws users miss this?

What Google could have done better: obviously implement rate throttling on API calls authenticated through the Gemini AI Pro $20/month accounts. (I thought they did this, buy apparently not?) Google tries hard to get people to get API keys, which is what I do, and there seems to be a very large free tier on API calls before my credit card gets hit every month.

[LegateLaurie]

Given how popular OpenClaw is (and that OpenClaw itself supports antigravity), I think it's shortsighted to not publicly state that it's not allowed and to warn users. Permanently banning people from Antigravity (much like any Google product) feels really harsh.

[blitzar]

Can I at least log in one last time and download my gmail messages from 2004?

[jimbob45]

Then it should be “This is your first and final warning. The next time we catch you, it’s a ban.”. People are building their lives around this stuff and kneejerk bans erode good faith in your platform.

[cogman10]

Oh man.

What a wonderful way to stop people from using your LLM.

All these AI companies trying to get everyone to be locked into their toolchains is just hilariously short sighted. Particularly for dev tools. It's the sure path to get devs to hate your product.

And for what? The devs are already paying a pretty penny to use your LLM. Why do you also need to force them to using your toolkit?

[usef-]

There is a reality that when they control the client it can be significantly cheaper for them to run: the Claude code creator has mentioned that the client was carefully designed to maximise prompt caching. If you use a different client, your usage patterns can be different and it may cost them significantly more to serve you.

This isn't a sudden change, either: they were always up-front that subscriptions are for their own clients/apps, and API is for external clients. They don't document the internal client API/auth (people extracted it).

I think a more valid complaint might be "The API costs too much" if you prefer alternative clients. But all providers are quite short on compute at the moment from what I hear, and they're likely prioritising what they subsidise.

[esskay]

I imagine its a case of the providers not wanting to admit its costing them a fortune because suddenly all these low-medium usage accounts are now their highest use ones.

Not saying it's right. But it's also not exactly a secret that they are all taking VERY heavy losses even with pricey subscriptions.

[llm_nerd]

The devs are paying to use the UIs provided by the company. The usage-based API is a separate offering, and everyone knows that.

It's okay to be annoyed at being caught, but honestly the deer in the headlights bit is a bit ridiculous.

If you want to use an API, pay for the API option. Or run your own models.

[chasil]

Google has been particularly pernicious in the corporate exercise of zero-tolerance.

Because of their large footprint in so many areas, it is wise to greatly (re)consider expansion in the ways that you rely on them.

[fy20]

Antigravity is useless anyway. I tried it last week and it needs approval for every file read and tool call. There's an option in the app to auto-approve, except it doesn't work. Plenty of complaints online about this. Clearly they don't actually care about the product, some exec just felt that they need to get into the editor game.

Next I tried using the Antigravity Gemini plan through OpenCode (I guess also a bannable offense?) and the first request used up my limit for the week.

[driverdan]

Hopefully this gets people to stop using Google for more than just LLMs.

[overgard]

The tool thing is kind of infuriating at the moment. I've been using Claude on the command line so I can use my subscription. It's fine, but it also feels kind of silly, like I'm looking at ccusage and it seems like I'm using way more $ in tokens than I'm paying for with the subscription. Which is a win for me, but, I don't really feel like Claude Code is such a compelling product that it's going to keep me locked in to their model, so I don't know why they're creating such a steep discount to get me to use it. I'm perfectly fine using Codex's tools, or whatever. I dunno, it seems like way more cost effective to use the first party tools but I'm not sure why they really want that. Are the third party tools just really inefficient with API usage or something?

[noosphr]

You are being subsidised to the tune of 50 to 99.9 cents on the dollar compared to the API.

What the hell do you expect? To get paid for using other people's tools on Google's servers?

[jacquesm]

No, this is hilarious: company that rams their AI down your throat at every opportunity then turns around and shuts down your account because you actually use their AI... there is no limit to the idiocy around Google's AI roll-out. I wished I could donate the AI credits that I'm paying for (thanks Google for that price increase for a product I never chose to buy) to the people that need them more.

[jcgrillo]

This kind of reputational damage is just adding fuel to the fire. If my business depended in any way on google--GCP, GSuite, whatever--it would right now be a very urgent task to fire them and find replacements. They've been pretty sketchy for a while, but this kind of thing is over the top.

[overgard]

Yikes!! This is really unfortunate, because Google's models seem very good but there's no way I'm using a google service for this kind of thing with those policies. I don't even want to run OpenClaw, but that's scary! Plus, I have my google account tied to authenticating so many things that if my account were to be suspended or something that would be a nightmare.

I haven't tried Antigravity but I remember on release it had huge UX issues. Is this product just not ready for primetime?

[ludjer]

There is nothing stopping you from using google models just get the correct product, you can pay for tokens then they do not care what you use it for.

[mark_l_watson]

Excuse me giving you advice, unasked for: as part of your ‘digital life spring cleaning’ spend some time converting auth with Google/Apple/GitHub for services to logging in with your email (on your own domain) and some other second auth.

BTW, I tend to only use Google for services I pay for (YouTube+, APIs, Gemini Plus, sometimes GCP).

[user205738]

Just create another Google account. I don't remember there being any restrictions for this. Every time the service required a Google account to log in or it was easier than registering and going through the checks, I just created a new Google account and registered.

[therealmarv]

How about giving the user a big warning to not do that and then block the account if the user continues. This total blocks are crazy. Especially for people who use their Google account for 20+ years or something.

[jauntywundrkind]

Google's bundling of so many services into one account is becoming a gargantuan liability for them & their users.

This "zero tolerance" policy is just absurdly mega-goliath out of touch with the world. The sort of soulless brain dead corporatism that absolutely does not think for even a single millisecond about its decisions, that doesn't care about anything other than reducing customer support or complexity, no matter what the cost.

Kicking people off their accounts for this is Google being willing to cause enormous untoward damage. With basically not even the faintest willingness to try to correct. Gobsmacking vicious indifference, ok with suffering.

[moontear]

Time and time again it is shown to *not* use your main account for everything. This goes for Apple and having a separate account for development work, for the App Store and your main iCloud account but this also goes for all other SaaS providers.

You are doing groundbreaking new and untested stuff with Claw? Do not use your main account. You want to access your main account's data? Sure, allow it via OAUTH/whatever possible way.

Have separate accounts, people. You don't want one product groups decision in those large SaaS corps to impact everything else.

[overgard]

It seems like a temp ban here would be totally reasonable, like, "we disabled your account for a day here's why, don't do it again". Permanent though, eek!

[TrackerFF]

Nothing new. 10 years ago my (now 20+ year) google account was compromised for a whole 5 minutes. It was used by shady bots, and instantly banned. No warnings, no nothing. Trying to figure out what had happened was a challenge in itself.

Getting through to customer support was impossible.

5 years later I tried to get my account opened up, filled out some forms, and by some miracle it was.

My biggest takeaway from this (other than enabling 2FA) was that it is probably easier to get ahold of the scammers that control your account, than to get ahold of actual human customer support at google / alphabet.

[anon84873628]

Can you help me understand which of these happened?

1) Open Claw has a Google OAuth client id that users are signing in with. (This seems unlikely because why would Google have approved the client or not banned it)

2) Users are creating their own OAuth client id for signing themselves into Open Claw. (Again, why would these clients be able to use APIs Google doesn't want them to?)

3) Users are taking a token minted with the Antigravity client and using it in Open Claw to call "private" APIs.

Assuming it's #3, how is that physically accomplished? And then how does Google figure out it happened?

[moontear]

"how does Google figure out it happened" - no insider knowledge, but the calls Claw makes are very different than the regular IDE, so the calls and volume alone would be an indicator. Maybe Google has even updated their Antigravity IDEs to just include some other User Agent, that Claw auth does not have.

Everything just guesswork, but I don't think it is too hard to figure out whether it is Antigravity calling the APIs or any Claw.

[nucleative]

I cannot de-Google fast enough.

So if I ask Google's AI studio the wrong question, I might get my G-drive, Gmail, API access, Play store, YouTube channel, "login with Google" tokens, and more all ripped away instantly with no recourse?

No thanks

[dmix]

It’s an extremely strong incentive to not use Gemini for anything serious

[ninjagoo]

Google is a company well down the path of enshittification, they even got rid of their motto "Don't be evil".

As a consumer, you're better served by using services from companies earlier in that lifecycle, where value accrues to you, and that's not Google, and likely not many other big providers.

When those newer companies turn, you switch. Do not allow yourself to get locked into an ecosystem. It's hard work, but it will pay dividends in the long run.

[t-writescode]

I [ctrl+f]'d for this comment in the thread linked above, and couldn't find it. May I ask where you saw that?

[cupantae]

It’s there. User Jun_Meng.

[SilverSlash]

Same. Cannot find it in that thread and I would like to know the source too.

[sathish316]

Google is a copycat in AI products.

Gemini Chat: ChatGPT

Gemini CLI: Claude Code

Antigravity: Cursor

Nano banana: Midjourney

Subscription API ban: copied Anthropic

NotebookLM seems to be the only exception, or it could be an acquisition.

Subscription API ban could be part of a larger strategy because of OpenClaw’s association with OpenAI and Google will not be able to copy OpenClaw Personal Assistant model due to the security implications.

Pay as you go through API pricing is one of the easiest ways to drastically reduce mass adoption of a product. Pay per month works on consumption patterns where 80% of the users will barely use the product to compensate for the other 10 or 20% power users.

[femiagbabiaka]

I'd assume API usage through tokens vs. OAuth are rate limited differently? I don't actually see hard numbers for Antigravity model rate limits on their website so guessing this is the case.

[cube00]

It's not about the rate limit, it's about the price, raw API calls are far more expensive then subsidised Antigravity calls.

[Belphemur]

Basically Google is saying: You can't use Gemini with OAuth on other products than Google products (Anti Gravity).

I mean it's fair, just should have been documented properly and the possibility to use Gemini through OAuth restricted with proper scope instead of saying you broke the ToS we ban your 350$/ month account.

[gck1]

Can openclaw go through gemini-cli? Because they can and nobody would notice anything has changed. It would use the same OAuth down the line and consume the same quotas.

[infecto]

Maybe the ban is overstepping but I still continue to not understand the issue. Rarely in the history of APIs has a commercial company wanted folks to use the private APIs.

[SilverElfin]

It’s protectionism. These corporations are staying big because of anti competitive practices and capital. They don’t want to let go.

[dmix]

That’s called protecting a monopoly not protectionism

[petesergeant]

Using Google for anything other than search and email has been a poor choice for a long time.

[8note]

cant you just wrap it though?

swap out the direct api call with a call to gemini cli?

[cgio]

That’s my question too. Presumably one could even build an API that just runs things in cli? How would they plan to restrict that? Based on usage patterns?

[ninjagoo]

Terms of Service that span multiple pages of legalese and require an attorney to parse, for something that is either 'free' or a few $ per month, and can result in loss of service across multiple product lines, AND has binding lopsided arbitration requirements, is not only draconian, it is unconscionable.

Look at how messed up this is: Google Attorneys, paid hundreds of $/hour, spending hours and hours putting together these "Terms of Service" on one side; and a simple consumer on the other side, making a few $ per hour, not trained in legalese, expected to make a decision on a service that is supposed to cost a few $ a month, and if you make an honest mistake, can cause you a lot of trouble in your life.

[cogman10]

You can call the ToS draconian, yes.

Just because something is in the ToS doesn't mean it's reasonable.

[smashah]

"It's against the Boot's TOS to remain unlicked"

[jama211]

You think everyone is silly for finding this policy dumb?