Google is gonna kill my product? 100%.

When I was a kid, I loved to play this game:

Imagine being a kid, but also a foosball prodigy, constantly tinkering with new moves to surprise your opponents.

You spend hours practicing. The thrill of beating everyone increases.

But then, a fear creeps in – what if another player copies and improves your moves?

👉 This fear of being outpaced by others is a constant battle for many indie hackers.

I had this amazing idea, a better way to use Gemini, and I thought...why not make it into an extension, this would be perfect, it's like the perfect dogfooding experience.

Using Gemini to give Chrome users a better Chrome experience.

However, just like in foosball, I had this fear that releasing my idea would also be its demise. At any point tomorrow I expect Google Chrome to go and add the same feature (and better) natively to the browser..

Hold on, first let me tell you about Gemini Side Panel

Ever felt like you're constantly juggling between browser tabs while using AI? You write a line of JavaScript, switch to a reference doc, then jump back and forth comparing code snippets.

Or maybe you're trying to answer on LinkedIn?

👉 Click here and click there, open a tab start a prompt...

This context-switching can kill your productivity and slow down your entire development flow.

As indie hackers, like you and me, we understand the struggle of maximizing efficiency with limited resources.
That's where Gemini Side Panel comes in.

When is it a good idea, when is it a feature and when is it doomed?

It's hard to say when your idea is gonna be a business, or just a feature that some major player is gonna just implement.

One thing is for sure, when I released Gemini Side Panel on Product Hunt it got to #2

I am proud of this and no matter what happens, I had a good amount of fun making the trailer, hunting it, getting it to #2 and of course building it with good ol' JavaScript :)

I even made a trailer: https://youtu.be/dTsk_NtGFFM