Gemini 3: Google Finally Remembers It’s Allowed to Win

On November 18, 2025, Google woke up, chugged a triple-shot espresso, and yeeted Gemini 3 into the world like it had a personal grudge against every other model. The result? A multimodal monster that can read a 1-million-token home video of your uncle’s 2009 wedding, summarize the drama, and still have room to roast the DJ’s playlist.

Benchmarks: The Victory Lap (With Confetti and a Tiny Bit of Smugness)

• LMArena: 1501 points. Translation: still sitting at the cool kids’ table, wearing the crown, and refusing to share crayons.
• Humanity’s Last Exam (naked, no tools): 37.5 %. Only 13 points behind GPT-5.1, which is basically the difference between “genius” and “guy who definitely cheated off the genius.”
• Same exam but Deep Think mode turned on: 41 %. Google basically whispered, “Hold my beer.”
• Video-MMMU: 87.6 %. It watched cat videos for science and still aced the test.
• GPQA Diamond: 93.8 %. At this point the diamonds are just asking for Gemini’s autograph.

Poor Claude Sonnet 4.5 is over there getting 2–3 % less on coding benchmarks and pretending it’s totally fine, like the kid who says he didn’t want to win musical chairs anyway.

Launch Schedule: Because Google Apparently Hired a Teleporter

• Nov 18: base model + Gemini 3 Pro drop
• Nov 19: Deep Think preview and Google Search gets its new AI Mode glow-up
• Nov 20: Antigravity (a VS Code fork that lets Gemini write code while you go touch grass) lands for developers

Early adopters say Antigravity cuts manual scripting by 45 %. Translation: junior devs now have time to play ping-pong and still look productive.

Adoption: The Numbers Are Doing the Macarena

• AI Overviews: 2 billion monthly users (basically everyone except your grandma who still prints MapQuest directions)
• Gemini app: 650 million people poking it daily
• 70 % of Google Cloud customers flipped the “yes please, AI” switch
• 40 % of Search queries now detour through Gemini 3, which finishes your thought so fast you don’t even need to click anything. Advertisers are crying happy tears.

Pricing: Yes, It Costs More (Because Muscles Aren’t Free)

API now $2/M input, $12/M output. Enterprise customers looked at the bill, shrugged, and said, “Fine, take my wallet, just keep the million-token video context coming.” Deep Think mode? A casual $250/month—pocket change when your alternative is paying humans to watch 10-hour security footage.

The Competition’s Group Chat Right Now

• OpenAI: frantically whiteboard-sketching “GPT-5.2 + actual video understanding, maybe Q3 2026???”
• Anthropic: updating résumés, just in case
• Wall Street: Loop Capital slapped a “Buy” on Alphabet so fast they pulled a muscle

Bottom line: Gemini 3 didn’t just raise the bar—it installed the bar in low-Earth orbit, gave it RGB lighting, and made it play Rick Astley when rivals try to jump it. Google is back, baby, and this time it brought receipts, receipts that can apparently watch YouTube while reading them.