Google Releases Gemma 4: A Hands-On Guide to the New Open Multimodal LLM

Google DeepMind has released Gemma 4, the fourth generation of its open-weight language model family, marking a significant advancement in the open-source AI landscape. Released on April 2, 2026, Gemma 4 is built upon Gemini 3 research and introduces comprehensive multimodal capabilities, including support for text, image, video, and audio inputs. A major highlight is the adoption of the Apache 2.0 license, removing previous usage restrictions and facilitating unlimited commercial deployment. The model features a Mixture-of-Experts architecture, with a 26B variant offering high-quality performance at lower computational costs, and a configurable 'thinking mode' for complex reasoning tasks. With context windows expanding up to 256K tokens and native function calling, Gemma 4 is designed for versatile applications ranging from edge devices to workstations. This guide details how developers can run Gemma 4 locally on laptops using Ollama, emphasizing accessibility without the need for GPU rentals or API keys. The release positions Google competitively against other open-model leaders like Llama and Mistral, providing a robust, enterprise-friendly option for local AI integration.