For how long would it stay $200 of you can rack up 5 figures if usage..

This is exactly why I upgrade to the Pixel 10 Pro. On Black Friday, you could get a Pixel 10 Pro for about $450 on the U.S. Google Fi store (which sells unlocked phones)... which is also about how much a Pixel 9 Pro goes for on eBay; minus eBay fees and accounting for shipping, that's an upgrade for < $100. But, it's even better, the Pixel 10 Pro comes with a year of their "AI Pro" plan (which I believe costs around $240/year.) There is really, really no point in upgrading to a Pixel 10 Pro from a Pixel 9 Pro, and environmentally it pains me to be the person upgrading my phone on an annual basis (this is the fastest I've ever upgraded a phone, ever) but it's hard to turn down when Google is selling $800~ish for $400~ish.

And yeah, it's not the insanely priced AI Ultra plan, but if there are any hard limits on Gemini Pro usage I haven't found them. I have played a lot with really long Antigravity sessions to try to figure out what this thing is good for, and it seems like it will pretty much sit there and run all day. (And I can't really blame anyone for still remaining mad about AI to be completely honest, but the technology is too neat by this point to just completely ignore it.)

Seeing as Google is still giving away a bunch of free access, I'm guessing they're still in the ultra-cash-burning phase of things. My hope (hopium, realistically) is that by the time all of the cash burning is over, there will be open-weight local models that are striking near where Gemini 3 Pro strikes today. It doesn't have to be as good, getting nearby on hardware consumers can afford would be awesome.

But I'm not holding my breath, so let's hope the cash burning continues for a few years.

(There is, of course, the other way to look at it, which is that looking at the pricing per token may not tell the whole story. Given that Google is running their own data centers, it's possible the economic proposition isn't as bad as it looks. OTOH, it's also possible it is worse than it looks, if they happen to be selling tokens at a loss... but I quite doubt it, given they are currently SOTA and can charge a premium.)