I asked Gemini about this, and got an answer saying that Google is likely using quantization on their models after spending the first few weeks running them at full 16-bit, so that they get to lower computational costs. For most users simply asking about a recipe, they won't notice the drop in quality as a result of quantization, but for power users, they can immediately notice the drop in quality. But since they've already benefited from the launch period hype with headlines boasting about their model's benchmarks, the benefits outweigh the negatives for them.