Google releases Gemma 4, a family of open models built off of Gemini 3
TL;DR
Google releases Gemma 4, a family of open-weight models derived from the technology behind Gemini 3.
Key Points
- Four variants are available: 2B and 4B 'Effective' models for edge devices like smartphones, plus a 26B Mixture-of-Experts and a 31B Dense model for more powerful hardware.
- The models are released as open-weight – weights are freely accessible, though full training code remains proprietary.
- Google is bringing core Gemini 3 architecture and research to the open-source community.
Nauti's Take
Google is playing a clever game here: Gemini 3 remains the premium paid offering, while Gemma 4 as open-weight builds developer goodwill and ecosystem lock-in. The four-tier lineup – from 2B for smartphones to 31B Dense – shows Google is finally addressing the full hardware stack rather than just one benchmark-friendly sweet spot.
The caveat remains: 'open-weight' is not the same as 'open source' – those wanting full training data and code are still out of luck. That said, for most practical use cases the weight release is what matters, and Google delivers solidly here.
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