this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Google might start charging for access to search results that use generative artificial intelligence tools. That's according to a new Financial Times report citing "three people with knowledge of [Google's] plans."

Charging for any part of the search engine at the core of its business would be a first for Google, which has funded its search product solely with ads since 2000. But it's far from the first time Google would charge for AI enhancements in general; the "AI Premium" tier of a Google One subscription costs $10 more per month than a standard "Premium" plan, for instance, while "Gemini Business" adds $20 a month to a standard Google Workspace subscription.

While those paid products offer access to Google's high-end "Gemini Advanced" AI model, Google also offers free access to its less performant, plain "Gemini" model without any kind of paid subscription.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 4 months ago

Oh no, if I don't give them money, I won't get LLM enshitification? The horror!

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Paying for the privilege of using AI to sift through the vast bleak sea of AI generated garbage. What a time to be alive!

[–] pastermil 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Something something they make us buy the cure for the disease they created?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does that mean I can opt out? nice!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

that doesn't mean they would not feed your data to that LLM.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good, that means they won't try to force them on me.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They will absolutely try to force the paid feature on you. How many times have you seen the youtube premium prompt?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's been a long time since I've seen that... but I mostly watch YouTube through Grayjay, or on a browser with adblocking enabled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't have that blocked, and use the youtube website, so I see it at least once a week.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You don't use any adblockers on YouTube?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I do, I just don't have the premium prompt blocked

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ah, sorry, I didn't realize that there was an ad-blocker that didn't block the premium prompt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I mean I have ublock origin and it still shows up between rows of videos.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Good news, in my opinion. I don't think users see the value in of AI and so maybe sites will go back to catering to organic results instead.

Just kidding Google will just make the non-AI search experience so bad that people are forced to sign up for their AI subscription

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's already bad, they don't have to do anything to make it bad. The real issue will be if they try to make it so it's AI or nothing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Right?! I've switched to Duck Duck Go 🦆

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

My first thought was "thank God! Maybe I won't have to scroll past their AI results to get to actual search results".

Kagi needs better android integration. I hate searching ony phone now because I can't use kagi easily.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh thank god, I'll be able to avoid seeing it by just not paying.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

You could also avoid seeing it by using a different search engine.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This means we won’t be getting the results we already get.

Or we are going to get the results we got when google was good, but with money.

“We ruin results until payments improve.”

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully this will backfire and just push people to use alternative search engines. Unlike YouTube and other subscription services, Google Search doesn’t have any exclusive rights to content.

[–] jaemo 1 points 4 months ago

It will. 5, maybe 8 years ago, google mighta gotten this one over on us, but it's way too late. I don't even trust google search results anymore, haven't used it to look up something in over a year. Maps, sure. Web search? Nahp.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago

I don't even want those features for free, why would I pay for it? lol

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

“Pay for this thing you never wanted or you won’t get it!!!”

Oh no! Anyway.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

I don't want AI feature, subscription lock sounds good to me.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

I'm all for this!

It's what basically every other AI tool wants to do, because building and operating LLM's at this scale is horrifically expensive.

So let them do it. Those that want these tools will pay, and the 99.999% of people that don't give a fuck about AI can just continue as normal.

Hell, if Google want to deshitify their search by removing the ML nonsense they've been loading into it for the last decade or so, even better! Let me pay for that too, and I'll pay them exactly nothing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Probably because they haven't figured out a way to tie Ad-sense to an AI engine.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Once upon a time, in the vast land of Internet, there was a magical library called Web. The library had many librarians, but a wise old owl by the name of Google was the most popular one. Everyone in the kingdom of knowledge loved him. People asked him questions, and Google gave them the answers. Life was good.

However, in the dark corners of the Internet, in the Swamps of Bottomless Greed, there lurked an evil litch queen Seo. She only wanted to watch the world burn, and so she cast an evil curse on Google. The curse of Seo made Google give completely wrong answer. As chaos, ignorance and lies spread cross the land, queen Seo laughed in her castle.

The end.

Good night, sweet dreams.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think this lets Google off the hook. I think Google wanted to be the only librarian because Google was jealous of the other librarians, so they went to the swamp of greed and negotiated with the evil queen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Had to leave out so much from this version. Maybe there should be a director’s cut, part 2 or something. 😁

I already have some ideas for a sequel, where an evil necromancer Meta unleashes the Cancer of Facebook on the entire Internet. Later, he assassinates a competing wizard called WhatsApp and resurrects his decaying corpse thought the use of foul magic and necromancy. Now that Meta has corrupted WhatsApp, he can harness the immense power of his new minion to further increase the destruction caused by the Cancer of Facebook that is already beginning to spread across the Internet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Imagine me paying to give my data to feed their info beast. No thanks. I can run my own AI tools.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

If I have to pay for Google, I'd rather pay Kagi.

[–] Imgonnatrythis 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Would love to see Google do pay to play for this instead of devious pay with your usage data and ads (although likely they will do both)

[–] Codilingus 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The largest number in the world isn't big enough to describe the % chance they double dip. Ironically I think the 2nd largest numbers are called googols, after grahams number, IIRC.

[–] Imgonnatrythis 1 points 4 months ago

I'm not entirely sure that's how percentages work here, but regardless maybe they'll give you a reach around or something on this plan at least...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Google might start charging for access to search results that use generative artificial intelligence tools.

While those paid products offer access to Google's high-end "Gemini Advanced" AI model, Google also offers free access to its less performant, plain "Gemini" model without any kind of paid subscription.

"SGE never feels like a useful addition to Google Search," Ars' Ron Amadeo wrote last month.

Regardless, the current tech industry mania surrounding anything and everything related to generative AI may make Google feel it has to integrate the technology into some sort of "premium" search product sooner rather than later.

Last month, the company announced it was redoubling its efforts to limit the appearance of "spammy, low-quality content"—much of it generated by AI chatbots—in its search results.

In February, Google shut down the image generation features of its Gemini AI model after the service was found inserting historically inaccurate examples of racial diversity into some of its prompt responses.


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