This is a submission for the Gemma 4 Challenge: Write About Gemma 4
When Google dropped Gemma 4 in April 2025, my first reaction was skepticism. We have seen "open" models before that came with so many restrictions they were barely usable. Then I read the license: Apache 2.0. Download it, fine-tune it, ship it commercially, no strings attached. That got my attention.
I spent a weekend running experiments with it and want to share what I found, especially for developers who are trying to figure out which model in the Gemma 4 family is worth their time.
What Is Gemma 4, Actually?
Gemma 4 is Google DeepMind's fourth generation of open-weight models. It comes in four sizes: E2B, E4B, 12B, and 27B (the 27B is actually a 26B Mixture of Experts model). The E prefix stands for Edge, meaning those two smaller models are built specifically to run on phones and laptops.
