ClawHosters
by Daniel Samer
3 min read
$249.99 per month. That's what Google AI Ultra subscribers were paying when Google cut their Antigravity access without warning. No email beforehand. No grace period. Some users were charged their monthly renewal days before the ban hit. No refunds.
What Happened
The ban wave rolled out between February 9 and 14, 2026. Google suspended Antigravity, Gemini CLI, and Cloud Code Private API access for users who had connected OpenClaw (and similar tools) via OAuth. Full Google accounts stayed intact. Gmail, Drive, Workspace were fine. But Antigravity was gone.
Google stayed silent for nearly two weeks. Users who contacted support got bounced between departments. The public explanation didn't come until February 23, when Antigravity lead Varun Mohan cited a "massive increase in malicious usage" that degraded service for other users.
"Malicious" is a strong word for paying customers using a product within its stated limits. Google's own ToS didn't explicitly prohibit third-party OAuth wrappers.
Three Companies, Three Reactions
The contrast is hard to ignore.
Google banned users, suspended access, issued no refunds.
Anthropic contacted OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger directly, updated their ToS to address the issue, and communicated changes before acting.
OpenAI hired Steinberger on February 15, the same week as the ban wave. They explicitly permit OpenClaw usage.
Steinberger's response to Google? He called it "pretty draconian" and announced he would remove Antigravity support from OpenClaw entirely. His quote on the difference: "Even Anthropic pings me and is nice about issues. Google just... bans?"
The Hacker News thread drew hundreds of comments debating whether users exploited pricing arbitrage or simply used what they paid for.
Why OAuth Created This Problem
The root cause is structural. OAuth routes requests through Google's own infrastructure at a flat subscription rate. When thousands of automated OpenClaw sessions hit that backend, compute costs balloon beyond what the $249.99 pricing model was built for.
Direct API keys work differently. As Angry Sysops analyzed, BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) bills per token through official API channels. Usage is metered, transparent, and explicitly permitted by every major provider.
If you run OpenClaw on ClawHosters, you bring your own API keys for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or any supported provider. That's BYOK by design. No OAuth proxying, no subscription arbitrage, no ToS ambiguity.
