Gemini felt genius on April 7, 2026.

I opened the Gemini web app and finally noticed the new branching chats option. I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised—it felt smooth and even a bit quicker than what I’m used to with ChatGPT. The interface was intuitive, and the conversations flowed without hiccups, leaving me impressed with how the feature currently performs.

I fed Gemini a huge, ultra‑niche research prompt that normally eats two days of endless tab‑hopping and PDF hunting. As I watched, it blasted through over 360 sites, filtered out SEO junk, cross‑checked facts, and spat out a fully cited report in minutes. The 3.1 Pro felt like a whole new beast—its speed and accuracy blew me away, making me feel like I was truly living in the future.

I’ve been using Gemini a lot and still like its core, but lately it feels stuck while other chats race ahead. I asked for an SVG like Claude’s instant visual and got a random image instead, and I can only get SVGs in Canvas mode. Missing folders/projects, flaky URL fetching, and zero citations make it frustrating. It seems Google is spreading thin, and the web/app experience is getting worse, even though the model itself is solid.