Will Google Search become paid after being subsidized by artificiale intelligence?

                                      

According to a new story published by the Financial Times, Google may begin charging fees for search results based on generative artificial intelligence capabilities, citing three people familiar with the company's plans.

The concept of imposing a paid financial subscription on any aspect of the search engine is novel, and it would be the first of its type for Google, which has funded its search services through advertising income since 2000.

However, this is not the first time Google has put fees on artificial intelligence services in general, as the "Gemini Business" service membership costs $20 more per month than the "Google Workspace" subscription.

While these expensive goods provide access to Google's Gemini Advanced model, the business also offers free access to the conventional, lower-performance Gemini model without requiring a paid subscription.

According to the proposed plan, traditional Google search, which does not rely on artificial intelligence, will remain free, while subscribers to the paid search package powered by artificial intelligence will continue to see ads alongside search results, according to the report.

However, advertising revenues of $175 billion last year may not be sufficient to cover the significant expenditures associated with AI-powered research. According to a Reuters story from last year, processing a search request through a complex neural network like Gemini often costs ten times more than a keyword search on a conventional Google search page, potentially costing the corporation several billion dollars.

So yet, Google has not made a final choice on how to implement this strategy, which includes a paid subscription for artificial intelligence searches.

Source : Financial Times