The average person Googles something three or four times every single day. Despite efforts from Microsoft to overhaul its Bing search engine, Google remains dominant when it comes to online search.
But despite our collective dependence on this tool — would you be happy to pay $19.99 a month to use the next-generation of search planned by the Californian company?
Google is purportedly looking to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the experience of searching for information, instructions, itineraries, and deals online. However, this won't be rolled out as a free upgrade to anyone who heads to Google.com, with the exciting new features locked behind a paywall, it has been reported.
Google has invested billions into its generative AI system, dubbed Gemini. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet Inc, is pictured speaking at the 2024 Business, Government, and Society Forum at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Stanford, California
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The US search firm is said to be looking at a dramatic shift in its business model that would see Google place some of its core products behind a paid subscription for the first time in its 25 year history.
According to sources speaking to the Financial Times, Google is said to be considering adding AI-powered Google search features to the subscription for its AI chatbot, dubbed Gemini.
This standalone service is a direct competitor to ChatGPT and can generate recipes, questionnaires, itineraries, and instructional guides within seconds based on a short written prompt. It can also dream up images, although Google slammed the brakes on this functionalityfollowing controversial pictures that added diversity to incorrect historical images, including the US Founding Fathers and 1940s German soldiers.
Gemini is only available to those who subscribe to the Google One AI Premium Plan for $19.99 per month. That's £16 converted, although final UK pricing has yet to be announced by Google. It's unclear whether the subscription fee would stay the same or increase following the addition of the AI search features.
Microsoft charges £19 per month for its rival Copilot Pro subscription, which taps into the latest Large Language Model (LLM) developed by the team behind ChatGPT and offers image creation tools too — so we'd expect Google to charge a similar amount when Gemini is available more widely.
A final decision on whether to charge for its AI-fuelled search has yet to be made, but the report in the Financial Times suggests engineers within Google are actively exploring the technical feasibility of it.
The traditional Google search engine, the most commonly used in the world, will remain free of charge.
Google told the BBC that it would “continue to build new premium capabilities and services to enhance our subscription offerings” but that it did not have “anything to announce right now”.
Google generates the vast majority of its revenue through advertising, which appears within its search results as Sponsored listings. It also develops the Android mobile operating system found on Samsung, OnePlus, and Motorola smartphones. Its Chrome web browser and YouTube services provide other advertising opportunities too. However, Google has looked to diversify in recent years.
The rise of generative AI applications, kickstarted in the public's imagination by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, has led to the biggest tech firms in the world scrambling to enter the space and become leaders in what is likely to be a key technology area for years to come.
Microsoft has invested $10 billion in OpenAI, which was previously funded by SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, as well as launching its own Copilot chatbot and AI-powered assistant, as has Facebook parent firm Meta, while Google has created Gemini and pushed more AI-powered features into its smartphones.
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