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One thing in your comment surprised me: "when a thing opens and closes" Why you would rely on the model's weights to know opening hours, instead of having the

One thing in your comment surprised me: "when a thing opens and closes" Why you would rely on the model's weights to know opening hours, instead of having the model call a web search tool to verify it on the official site?

mlmonkey 14d ago
Maybe the model does some tool calling on its own to figure out the times?
- rahimnathwani 14d ago
  You can opt in on a per-request basis.
plaidfuji 14d ago
I believe Gemini Flash is smart enough to know when to ground with web search. Their app has been saying it’s running a web search on almost all of my queries since 3.6. And given that Google … is Google, I trust them with web search grounding more than anyone else.
- panarky 14d ago
  It can also ground with Google Maps data in addition to web search.
jampa 14d ago
I wasn't trying to be precise originally, I just tried to fit activities into "morning / evening" buckets. I did the whole itinerary with Opus first, but when I gave it to Gemini 3.7 Flash to review, it started correcting it with "this place will close 5PM" or "this place is closed for good". It was right on every nit, so it was surprising how well the model knows these things. If I ever release this I'll probably need the SERP API or Google Maps SDK (which I've heard is very expensive now), but for a personal trip where I will verify manually, using the LLM is okay for now.
- rahimnathwani 14d ago
  When you called the Gemini API, did you opt in to using search grounding: tools=[{"type": "google_search"}] I'm curious whether in fact you were getting answers from the model weights (which is what I had assumed) or whether your API calls were resulting in web search tool calls.
  - kridsdale1 14d ago
    Google AI person here: Using grounding in Gemini is indeed backed by the same canonical data source for business information (like opening hours) as Google Maps. This stuff is available in its own API for a GCP fee, but we’ve built tooling to connect it to the Gemini agentic ecosystem as well.
    - mft_ 14d ago
      So if I understand you correctly, Gemini has direct free access to the Google Maps API in a manner that others (people, LLMs) would need to sign up for API access and pay for?
      - mark_l_watson 13d ago
        That is my understanding, which is a nice thing. I use Exa and Brave search APIs separately but the Google bundling is convenient. Ollama Cloud offers the same thing: they supply a web search tool bundled with cloud API inference services.
NiloCK 14d ago
Gemini models - at least via some interfaces - have tool calling API access to various Google integrations. flights.google.com, maps.google.com, etc. The info isn't in the model weights. Because of where I live, there are three viable airports for any given flight I might want to take, which historically has made shopping a real pain. But Gemini (and only Gemini) has greatly simplified it. Pramble plus date range plus destination and it very quickly generates potential itineraries with costs, total travel time (driving included), etc.
mark_l_watson 13d ago
The Gemini APIs have options for using Google Search grounding, or in simpler terms: to process a prompt by first using search to augment the context.
- rahimnathwani 13d ago
  Right, I mentioned that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539339 jampa was saying that the Gemini 3.7 (a model) ranks higher on real-world knowledge. The point I was originally making is that I would trust any model by itself to answer real-world knowledge problems. If I want to know opening hours, then probably any of the models could find the answer with a web search tool. Perhaps the Gemini API makes this easier, as the web search tool is built in.

mlmonkey 14d ago

Maybe the model does some tool calling on its own to figure out the times?

rahimnathwani 14d ago
You can opt in on a per-request basis.

plaidfuji 14d ago

I believe Gemini Flash is smart enough to know when to ground with web search. Their app has been saying it’s running a web search on almost all of my queries since 3.6. And given that Google … is Google, I trust them with web search grounding more than anyone else.

panarky 14d ago
It can also ground with Google Maps data in addition to web search.

jampa 14d ago

I wasn't trying to be precise originally, I just tried to fit activities into "morning / evening" buckets. I did the whole itinerary with Opus first, but when I gave it to Gemini 3.7 Flash to review, it started correcting it with "this place will close 5PM" or "this place is closed for good". It was right on every nit, so it was surprising how well the model knows these things. If I ever release this I'll probably need the SERP API or Google Maps SDK (which I've heard is very expensive now), but for a personal trip where I will verify manually, using the LLM is okay for now.

rahimnathwani 14d ago
When you called the Gemini API, did you opt in to using search grounding: tools=[{"type": "google_search"}] I'm curious whether in fact you were getting answers from the model weights (which is what I had assumed) or whether your API calls were resulting in web search tool calls.
- kridsdale1 14d ago
  Google AI person here: Using grounding in Gemini is indeed backed by the same canonical data source for business information (like opening hours) as Google Maps. This stuff is available in its own API for a GCP fee, but we’ve built tooling to connect it to the Gemini agentic ecosystem as well.
  - mft_ 14d ago
    So if I understand you correctly, Gemini has direct free access to the Google Maps API in a manner that others (people, LLMs) would need to sign up for API access and pay for?
    - mark_l_watson 13d ago
      That is my understanding, which is a nice thing. I use Exa and Brave search APIs separately but the Google bundling is convenient. Ollama Cloud offers the same thing: they supply a web search tool bundled with cloud API inference services.

NiloCK 14d ago

Gemini models - at least via some interfaces - have tool calling API access to various Google integrations. flights.google.com, maps.google.com, etc. The info isn't in the model weights. Because of where I live, there are three viable airports for any given flight I might want to take, which historically has made shopping a real pain. But Gemini (and only Gemini) has greatly simplified it. Pramble plus date range plus destination and it very quickly generates potential itineraries with costs, total travel time (driving included), etc.

mark_l_watson 13d ago

The Gemini APIs have options for using Google Search grounding, or in simpler terms: to process a prompt by first using search to augment the context.

rahimnathwani 13d ago
Right, I mentioned that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539339 jampa was saying that the Gemini 3.7 (a model) ranks higher on real-world knowledge. The point I was originally making is that I would trust any model by itself to answer real-world knowledge problems. If I want to know opening hours, then probably any of the models could find the answer with a web search tool. Perhaps the Gemini API makes this easier, as the web search tool is built in.