[JV00]

Because they have too many free users that will always remain on the free plan, as they are the "default" LLM for people who don't care much, and that is a enormous cost. Also the capabilities of their paid tiers are well known to enough people that they can rely on word of mouth and don't need to demo to customers-to-be

[wooger]

They're not more default than people innocently googling something and getting an AI response from some form of Gemini.

[JV00]

Right, but that form of Gemini is also not the top Gemini model with high thinking budget that you would get to use with a subscription, the response is probably generate with Gemini Flash and low thinking.