I don't know if anyone else has talked about this but I've been using the search mode AI as a free unlimited use version of Gemini for the last couple weeks and its shocking how good it is. i was able to go back and forth with it helping me summarize and show the themes in my story I'm making, and i was able to go back and forth for like 3 hours straight. their is a picture of how long the scroll is from how much ive used it with no usage limit to my knowledge.
ive recently transferred all of it to actual Gemini because the search mode can bug when multiple instances of the prompt are open and it deleted 2 hours of my writing. but besides that it quite literally allowed me to freely use all a very competent AI model for free.
only things you need to avoid are current events and mentions of self harm because those will flag the AI and make it force open a new prompt and not allow you to continue in the same prompt at all.
i got around this by always having a backup tab that is of a earlier instance of the prompt. and whenever you flag the system you just type on the backup tab and it will bypass the forced new prompt message.
you will lose some of your work but its better than losing everything.