Google Plans to Charge For AI-powered Search in Favour of Possible New Business Model

Is it even a normal week without some nice updates from Google all around? This time we are focusing on their AI-powered search. Google is considering charging for new "premium" features powered by generative artificial intelligence, which would be the biggest-ever shake-up of its search business.

It is expected that Google will look at options that include charging for some of the features of its AI-powered search service but has not yet made a final decision about whether or when it will launch it. It would be the first time Google has made people pay for enhancements to its core search product (but not the first time they charge for things, of course).

OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, and Google has been scrambling to respond to the competitive threat posed by the wildly popular chatbot. There has been limited access to its Search Generative Experience experiment offered to a select few users at the moment, but the general public has not yet been given access.

Microsoft launched improved AI-powered search and a chatbot in its Bing search engine more than a year ago, but the new features have done little to boost Bing's market share, which lags far behind Google’s Gemini, which shows not as much improvement, despite being connected to one of the biggest search engines around.

Google said it was "not working on or considering" an ad-free search experience but would "continue to build new premium capabilities and services to enhance our subscription offerings across Google".

It added that it was "continuing to rapidly improve the product to serve new user needs". For this idea to be feasible, they will have to make massive improvements, without considering how the users will react to more paid features.