To followup on this train of thought, I feel like it might be game over for everyone else if Google decides to release their own VS code Cursor-like clone and stays consistent with the incredible context and free tier for Gemini Pro that you currently get from online/webui Gemini and Google AI studio.
The question is do they want to go in that direction? (And also if they do, do they only allow Gemini model or do they open it up to a choice of various models (to also include models not related to Google/Gemini) and/or BYOK). I don't see why not because I believe they will slaughter Cursor, Windsurf, et al if so ...
Google have https://firebase.studio (originally idx.dev), which they recently updated, so I'd assume that they wouldn't want to cannibalize that.
the fact that it's been rebranded already within an year of launch and is so poorly marketed should tell you something about the future of this project
Google is famous for cannibalising their own projects or even outright running competing products.
Don’t see why they can’t offer a local option as well
Google spends an inordinate amount of money on client software in the form of Chrome, so maybe they could do an additional something, but looking at how their Google docs offline support is implemented, I don't know that there's appetite for that.
Then again there's also Android Studio, so what do I know. (not a lot)
1. You literally can't build something like Android studio emulator on the web.
2. Even if it's thinkable in last 4-5 years due to raising Popularity of web IDE, Android studio was built before that and they chose the IntelliJ platform.
3. Google also has flutter and go.