Enterprise customers keep Gemini CLI, but open source users are nudged toward a proprietary “upgrade” called Antigravity CLI
There’s an adage that’s nearly as old as this century that says when enough people start adopting a Google product, it’ll get cancelled. That’s not always the case, of course — Google Docs and Gmail have been around like forever — but it’s the case often enough that you should always be wary about making yourself dependent on anything from Google.
What I’m leading up to is that Uncle Goog’s gone and done it again. It’s abandoning Gemini CLI, the open source AI‑powered command‑line assistant it released last summer. Shortly after it was released, we took it for a ride and wrote about it, and liked it enough to add it to our AI arsenal, mainly for quick double checks to keep Perplexity honest.
“On June 18, 2026, Gemini CLI and Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions will stop serving requests for Google AI Pro and Ultra, as well as those using it free of charge using Gemini Code Assist for individuals,” Google group product manager Dmitry Lyalin and principal engineer Taylor Mullen wrote on Google’s developers blog on Tuesday. It’s being replaced with a similar — but to hear Google tell it, more advanced — proprietary project called Antigravity CLI, which was officially unveiled this week at Google I/O.
Google’s Bait and Switch
This is going to affect a lot of people.
Since its release last June, a community has formed around the project and has been writing software to support it. These have primarily been extensions, integrations, and contributions to the CLI, although some devs have been integrating it into open‑source tool chains. Additionally, launch partners such as Dynatrace, Elastic, Figma, Shopify, Stripe and dozens of others have worked to integrate the software into their workflows.
The way Google is handling this smells like a new twist on a game that’s become increasingly common in recent years. Google’s move effectively removes only the open source part of the equation. In this case, instead of having the license switched to something like a source-available license, Google’s forcing a move to a new proprietary platform.
The move isn’t forced on all Gemini CLI users. The sunsetting of Gemini CLI only affects open source users. It doesn’t happen for those who pay for the product.
“If your organization uses Gemini CLI or our IDE extensions via a Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise license, or if your organization uses Gemini Code Assist for GitHub through Google Cloud, your access remains unchanged,” Lyalin and Mullen explain. “We’ll continue to support Gemini CLI and Gemini Code Assist with access to the latest Gemini models and other updates. Gemini CLI will remain accessible via paid Gemini and Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform API keys. And if you’re excited to try Antigravity CLI, you can use it now with your Google Cloud projects.”
Google wants free users to stay on board, so there will be a freemium version of Antigravity CLI available, it just won’t be open source.
Why Google’s Doing This
If you’re wondering why Goog’s doing this, you might be excused for thinking that Google just likes slamming doors in users’ faces, but that’s probably not it.
In this case, Google talks about the importance of having a unified platform, which would make sense if it weren’t for the part about paying customers getting to keep Gemini CLI around.
“We can serve you best by pouring our energy into a single product built for today’s multi-agent reality,” Lyalin and Mullen said. “To deliver the single platform you need to build the future, we’re unifying our efforts into Google Antigravity, our premier agent-first development platform, which includes a powerful server-side harness and a brand-new terminal experience: Antigravity CLI.”
They also seem to forget — or want you to forget — that Antigravity isn’t open source.
“We look forward to seeing what you build next with Antigravity 2.0 and Antigravity CLI,” they said, failing to mention that whatever it is won’t be well integrated — or integrated at all — without the source code.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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