Google is considering introducing fees for new “premium features” based on generative artificial intelligence, which could be the biggest shake-up in the company’s search business.
The proposed revamp of the search engine would be the first time the company has made any of its core products paid, and shows that it is still grappling with a technology that threatens its advertising business, nearly a year and a half after ChatGPT debuted.
Google is considering adding some AI-powered search features to its premium services, which already offer access to the new Gemini AI assistant in Gmail and Docs, according to three Financial Times sources familiar with the company’s plans.
Engineers are developing the technology needed to deploy the service, but management has not yet made a final decision on whether or when to launch it, one of the people said.
Traditional Google searches will remain free, and ads will continue to appear alongside search results, even for subscribers.
But the paid service would be the first time Google, which for years has offered free services funded entirely by advertising, will force people to pay for improvements to its core search product.
Last year, Google generated $175 billion in revenue from search and related ads, more than half of its total sales, which presents the company with a conundrum: how to embrace the latest innovations in AI while maintaining its biggest profit driver.
Since November 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Google has been trying to respond to the competitive threat posed by the wildly popular chatbot. ChatGPT can provide quick and complete answers to many questions, threatening to render unnecessary the traditional search engine link list and the profitable advertising that appears alongside them.
Google began testing an experimental AI-powered search service last May, providing more detailed answers to queries and continuing to provide users with links to additional information and ads. However, the company is in no rush to add any features to its main search engine from what it calls the “Search Generative Experience” experiment.
Such search results, which include “artificial intelligence-based snapshot”, cost Google more than traditional answers, because generative AI consumes much more computing resources. The company has only offered access to SGE to a select few users, including some subscribers to the Google One package, which offers benefits such as additional cloud storage for a monthly fee.
Microsoft, which has a partnership with OpenAI, launched an improved GPT-based search and chatbot, now called Copilot, on its Bing search engine more than a year ago. However, new AI features have done little to increase Bing’s market share, which lags far behind Google.
Some analysts have warned that Google’s advertising business could suffer if the search engine provides more comprehensive answers generated by artificial intelligence that no longer require users to go to advertisers’ sites. In addition, many Internet publishers who depend on Google for Internet traffic fear that fewer users will visit their sites if Google’s AI-powered search pulls information from their web pages and presents it directly to users.
This year, Google added a new premium tier to its Google One consumer subscription for users who would like to use their state-of-the-art Gemini chatbot. The company also added Gemini to Workspace, a suite of online productivity apps like Gmail and Docs.
It’s unclear exactly how the company will try to integrate AI search into these paid services, which offer different pricing tiers, and when exactly the AI search offering will be ready to launch. Google may eventually decide to roll out certain elements of its experimental AI service on its main, free search engine, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
Google said the company is “not working on or considering” ad-free search, but will “continue to create new premium features and services to expand our Google subscription offerings.”
“For years, we’ve been reimagining search to help people access information most naturally for them,” Google said. “Thanks to our experiments with generative artificial intelligence in Search, we have already processed billions of queries and are seeing positive growth in Search queries in all our core markets. We continue to rapidly improve the product to meet new user needs.”
The company added: “We have nothing to announce at this time.”
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