Google released Gemma 4 on April 2 under the Apache 2.0 license. The release continues Google’s open-weights track alongside the closed Gemini family, and targets the self-hosting and on-device segment that Meta’s Llama 4 Scout and Maverick have dominated through early 2026.
The Apache 2.0 license is the headline. Llama 4 ships under Meta’s custom license which includes monthly-active-user thresholds and downstream usage clauses that have kept it out of some paid products. Apache 2.0 is simpler: use, modify, redistribute, sell products built on top. For agencies, consultancies, and small teams shipping Gemma into client work, the licensing story matters as much as the benchmarks.
Performance claims from third-party coverage place Gemma 4 at frontier-class reasoning at lower hardware tiers than Llama 4 Maverick. Google has not published a full benchmark comparison against proprietary flagships like Claude Opus 4.7 or GPT-5.4, and early independent testing is still sparse.
The competitive effect reaches the Chinese open-weights cluster (DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Yi, Kimi) and the Llama lineage. For buyers, open-weights competition is good news. Pricing power at the frontier stays with closed vendors, but the open-weights tier now has genuine choice instead of Llama-as-default.
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