✨What makes Gemini so practically useful? (Part 1): Performance leaps

It's been an incredible three years at Google, working on Gemini since the beginning! It's deeply rewarding seeing it evolve, connecting directly to Google's mission of making the world's information universally accessible and useful. While Gemini 1.0 focused on organizing and understanding information, Gemini 2 significantly amplifies its practical usefulness, for the agentic era.

What makes Gemini 2 so practically useful? It really comes down to two key things: First, there are significant performance improvements across the board. And second, and just as important, are some amazing new features that really unlock its capabilities in new ways.

Today, in the first part of a series looking at Gemini 2, let's focus on the performance leap.

For an objective comparison, I analyzed public benchmark data (from LMArena, LiveBench, Artificial Analysis, etc.) across key metrics including quality, price, performance. With Gemini's assistance, I then created a combined index comparing Gemini model performance.

📊 Check out the chart below! 👇

Key Takeaways:

• The chart shows a clear upward trend, with Gemini 2.0 and 2.5 models delivering substantial performance gains over previous generations.

• Notably, even the most lightweight and cost-effective model in the Gemini 2 family Gemini-2.0-Flash-Lite, performs on par with the previous top-tier model Gemini-1.5-Pro-002 - a testament to impressive performance and efficiency improvements!

• Gemini 2.5 model tops the chart, showcasing a significant leap forward in advanced reasoning capabilities.

Methodology for the Benchmark Index:

• Baseline: Used the first publicly available model (Gemini-1.0-Pro-Preview).

• Normalization: Applied Min-Max scaling to scores from each benchmark source.

• Combination: Calculated an equally weighted average of the available normalized scores for each model.

👉 Learn more about:

• Trying Gemini out on Vertex AI Studio

• Getting started with Gemini 2.0 Flash (notebook)

• Getting started with Gemini 2.5 Pro (notebook)

• Vertex AI Gemini 2 public documentation

✅ You may be also interested in Part 2 of the series: Gemini 2.0 Flash where we dive into Gemini 2.0 Flash! 🚀 This versatile workhorse model is making waves, powering a wide range of agentic workflows and delivering impressive real-world impact!