Google launches a free AI coding assistant – What to know
Google has released a new, free version of Gemini Code Assist today. It’s an AI code completion and help tool for individuals. The company calls it Gemini Code Assist for Individuals.
The company also released Gemini Code Assist for GitHub. It is a code review “agent” that automatically finds bugs in code and comments on them right in GitHub. We’re launching a free version of Gemini Code Assist globally to help you build faster. It comes with:
🛠️ 180K code completions per month
🌐 Support for all programming languages in the public domain
💡 128K token context window
With Code Assist for Individuals, developers can talk to a Google AI model in natural language through a chat window. 
At the moment, it works with 38 languages. The AI model can then view and change the developers’ codebase. Just like the well-known Copilot tool on GitHub, Gemini Code Assist for Individuals can fix bugs, finish chunks of code, or explain parts of the script that don’t make sense.
Today is the first day that developers can sign up for the free public trial of Gemini Code Assist for Individuals. As for Gemini Code Assist for GitHub, it checks pull requests automatically for bugs and makes other suggestions that might be useful.
Key Features of Code Assist for Individuals:
- Offers 180,000 code completions per month.
- Supports all programming languages in the public domain.
- Includes a 128,000-token context window.
Google says that the model that runs Code Assist for Individuals also has a 128,000-token context window, which is four times bigger than what the competition offers. That means the model can understand more code at once, which lets it work with more difficult codebases.
Google’s senior director of product management, Ryan J. Salva, mentioned, “Now anyone can more conveniently learn, create code snippets, debug, and modify their existing applications — all without needing to toggle between different windows for help or to copy and paste information from disconnected sources.”
Salva added, “While other popular free coding assistants have restrictive usage limits, with usually only 2,000 code completions per month, we wanted to offer something more generous.”
Competition in the AI Coding Assistant Space
Since about a year ago, Google has sold Gemini Code Assist to companies. In December, the company said that the AI coding helper would soon work with GitLab, GitHub, and Google Docs third-party tools. The Enterprise Code Assist tiers add things like audit logs, the ability to connect to other Google Cloud products, and the ability to make private files uniquely yours.
It’s clear that Google wants to compete with Microsoft and its developer tools company, GitHub. Seven months ago, Google hired Ryan Salva, who used to lead the GitHub Copilot team, to lead the company’s work on developer tools.
The free Individual tier of Gemini Code Assist seems to cover a lot, but it doesn’t have all the advanced business-focused features offered in the Standard and Enterprise versions. You will need to use Google’s paid tiers if you want to track output, connect to Google Cloud services like BigQuery, or customize responses using private code data sources.
The competition among tech companies has intensified, with many now offering their AI coding tools for free to stay ahead. Google’s latest move could potentially shift the landscape and prompt other companies to follow suit.
Google Cloud and Salesforce Partnership
Google has signed a $2.5 billion cloud deal over the next 7 years with Salesforce, who has mostly relied on AWS cloud servers. The partnership aims to connect Google Cloud’s infrastructure to Salesforce’s Data Cloud, AI-powered Agentforce helpers, and CRM software. The deal would improve how Google Workspace and Salesforce’s CRM and AI solutions work together, benefiting their business clients.
The CEO of Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian, highlighted the increasing demand for seamless connectivity between Salesforce and Google Cloud, especially for AI-driven customer service, data analytics, and automation.
Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff has publicly criticized Microsoft, mentioning that the latter has disappointed many customers by hyping their AI solutions excessively.
