Project Gemini
71 comments
·November 17, 2025graypegg
I really enjoyed messing around with Gemini a while ago! But after the "messing around" stage with the protocol itself, the restrictions inherent to gemtext sapped my excitement around it.
It's a mark up language squarely focused on those that write text, but arduous to use if you want to share things you've illustrated, which is most of what I share online that isn't tech related. There's of course the argument that inline images/a spec'd way to expose an image directory listing with thumbnails/etc would only serve to distract or exploit you... but that also ignores the fact that people make art for your eyeballs too. Text is certainly the first class citizen, where images/music/video are all tied for second class, accessible only by downloading them 1 by 1.
That does mean it's perfectly fit for purpose! I wouldn't say it's bad just because I don't get my specific needs met. Someone who's needs are met by Gemini will love it.
ecliptik
From what I remember about the name, it's derived from NASA space programs. Where Gopher is Mercury, Web is Apollo and Gemini is in between.
Gemini is a new internet protocol which:
- Is heavier than gopher
- Is lighter than the web
- Will not replace either
- Strives for maximum power to weight ratio
- Takes user privacy very seriously
throwaway894345
I wonder how discovery and search work if it’s just a bunch of linked documents? Do search engines exist outside of Gemini and link into it?
NoGravitas
There are several search engines of Geminispace, running as Gemini servers. There are also a number of feed aggregators that are widely used.
agiacalone
Also, part of the idea is discovery through linked high-quality sites. Like the webrings of the 1990s.
You find a capsule you like and discover others through that person's links.
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pianoben
Gemini was so much fun during lockdown - I loved the distraction of a new simple protocol, and the challenge of writing a gui client for it.
Can't say I'm surprised that it hasn't taken the world by storm, but it's still a cozy part of the Internet.
ramon156
I completely missed out on this :'(
netdevphoenix
Why do programmers have so little imagination when it comes to names? It should almost never be the case that project names conflict
corysama
For one, the project started in 2019 https://geminiprotocol.net/history/ So, I guess Google should rename their LLM?
For another, to do that we'd have to follow something like the prescription drug naming process https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-07/why-do-prescription-drug...
That way, instead of "Gemini", they could have named it something like "Cymbalta", "Xeljanz" or "Cialis" :P
myaccountonhn
Ask Google, this project predates the LLM.
CobrastanJorji
Fun fact: one of the first 10 bugs filed on the Go programming language was "Hey, I've been working on a programming language named Go for the last 10 years, please pick another name." https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9
ChipopLeMoral
Back when I was a Googler, I used to play a little game where I would think of a random word and then check if there was a Google internal project code named for it. It was a bit hard finding stuff that wasn't some system or project, and often there would be multiple ones. I actually found one that I thought would be a nice name and reserved the go link for it, but naming anything after it never panned out, when I finally got to design a system from scratch my manager wanted a boring descriptive name like "consolidated data system" (it was a bit more specific but that was the vibe).
Side note: I noticed that more "boring" and less sexy projects had cooler names a lot of the time, and my theory was that people were compensating for doing unsexy work.
mkoryak
I reserved go/poop years ago, but the ability to name a project with that name is diminishing
mattlondon
Please no more "Project Espresso" nonsense that is entirely meaningless to anyone reading this.
Pick a descriptive name. Everyone else who is not in your team will thank you.
morkalork
Google eats their own with names. Their latest and greatest AI framewofk is Agent Development Kit (ADK). Not to be confused with the Android Development Kit...
saretup
Too small for Google to care about.
rapnie
Large tech molochs don't care about any name, it seems. Their power and weight makes the name point to them. Seek on "Amazon" and find that, oh the 7th Wonder of Nature the "Amazon rainforest" is ranked second after some random Big Tech company run by a guy named Jeff. The "lungs of the earth" vs. cheap package delivery and AWS dashboards.
zitterbewegung
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
-- Phil Karlton
roomey
You forgot the "and off by one errors"
__MatrixMan__
I've always wondered if he meant coming up with good names or if he meant ensuring that names, however they're chosen, reliably resolve to the named thing.
javier123454321
I would add also hearing this quip every time either of those things come up un conversation.
johnnyo
“There are only two hard things in computer science. Cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.”
newswasboring
My favorite form is when someone shouts "concurrency" in the middle of the sentence.
begueradj
"There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors"
tracker1
You forgot "Off by one errors."
__MatrixMan__
Do you have a pile of projects lying around with good names? Coming up with a good one is hard and getting harder every day.
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mtzaldo
They all watched the same movies or read the same books
ddellacosta
"It should almost never be the case that project names conflict"
My corollary to this is "You should never reach for a language you are not fluent in for a name. Especially, just stop it with using Japanese words to name stuff please ffs"
SkyeCA
> You should never reach for a language you are not fluent in for a name
I agree, but that still doesn't stop funny name related issues between languages. One of my favourites was Pidora (a Fedora release for the RPI) which caused offence to some Russian speakers.
ddellacosta
Heh good point. Coq comes to mind too...there was something else recently that sounded terrible in French..."Bitchat" maybe?
exasperaited
> It should almost never be the case that project names conflict
Sure, if you want projects to have the same naming strategy as Chinese Amazon Marketplace vendors.
Away from that, significance in naming begins to cluster quite quickly.
RealCodingOtaku
I have got only two annoyance on Gemini, lack of inline links and _font styling_, and they are by design (https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#44-questions-about-t...)
It's fine for something like HN, but I heavily rely on named links and emphasis on all my blogs and is a dealbreaker.
mattlondon
Yeah they missed an opportunity to more fully support something more like markdown that offered in-line links and basic text formatting. Missing tables is also quite the deal breaker for a bunch of things.
But yeah it seems like these lack of features is a willful and highly-opinionated approach to what the author of the protocol wants to take a stance on (their excuse is ease of implementation for clients, but I think it is a more of a deliberate choice). That's fine. It's their protocol and they can do what they want with it, but I think they missed an opportunity for it to take off.
Various people since have suggested we just settle on HTML 4 (with no scripting) and we'd be way better off and I agree.
cfiggers
Same here. Those are my gripes exactly.
agiacalone
I've had a Gemini Capsule (what Gemini calls a 'website/blog' since about 2021. It gets very little traffic, but it's fun to have. Browsing the smallweb is nice in the evenings when I want a high signal-to-noise ratio of interesting content.
TuringTest
Honest question, how do you discover interesting content over this protocol?
Is there people building the equivalent to web directories and web rings? Or search engines? What are the cultural expectations on navigating other people's published resources?
ecliptik
There are search engines, directories and feed aggregators [1].
Best means of discovery is like the original web, you surf it, bouncing from capsule to capsule finding what you like.
1. https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini?tab=readme-ov-file...
bnchrch
If we maintain this trajectory Gemini is going to have as many dual meanings in the software world as Map.
myaccountonhn
I'd love a minimal protocol like this that was also somehow scraping resistant.
rappatic
Why is everything named Gemini these days?
throitallaway
Google renamed Bard to Gemini last year. Side note: Google's "Gemini" product name is way overloaded. They have like 6 different things that you can buy/use that are named that.
arnaudsm
The Gemini protocol started in 2019, before Google's Gemini in 2023.
It's proably a popular word for tech workers fans of the american space race.
exasperaited
Or for people who want to evoke notions of duality/parallels/twinship.
didi_bear
Because Copilot was already taken
mock-possum
Yeah it seems like everybody and their brother is naming things Gemini, is there a dual meaning I’m not aware of?
incognito124
Nice pair of Gemini puns
adocomplete
yeah seems like an odd choice for a new project.
jasonjmcghee
This long predates Google LLMs
My main blog is now an "anonymous" gemlog. I use the kineto http proxy to provide a website version as well. I wrote a little deploy script that scrapes my posts and creates an atom XML feed (static doc) that kineto serves for those few people who want to stay up-to-date.
Once a quarter, I batch up the recent posts and bcc a bunch of folks I like to keep in touch with. Some of them respond. This is what I do in place of social media now; outside of email, Discord and WhatsApp are all I use to keep in touch with folks.
I also like to poke around different gemlogs with Lagrange, which is a nice desktop-oriented Gemini client. It's good fun.