Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
AI Google

Google Considers Charging For AI-Powered Search 46

Posted by BeauHD from the big-changes-ahead dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Google is considering charging for new "premium" features powered by generative artificial intelligence, in what would be the biggest ever shake-up of its search business. The proposed revamp to its cash cow search engine would mark the first time the company has put any of its core product behind a paywall, and shows it is still grappling with a technology that threatens its advertising business, almost a year and a half after the debut of ChatGPT. Google is looking at options including adding certain AI-powered search features to its premium subscription services, which already offer access to its new Gemini AI assistant in Gmail and Docs, according to three people with knowledge of its plans. Engineers are developing the technology needed to deploy the service but executives have not yet made a final decision on whether or when to launch it, one of the people said. Google's traditional search engine would remain free of charge, while ads would continue to appear alongside search results even for subscribers. But charging would represent the first time that Google -- which for many years offered free consumer services funded entirely by advertising -- has made people pay for enhancements to its core search product. "For years, we've been reinventing Search to help people access information in the way that's most natural to them," said Google. "With our generative AI experiments in Search, we've already served billions of queries, and we're seeing positive Search query growth in all of our major markets. We're continuing to rapidly improve the product to serve new user needs."

It added: "We don't have anything to announce right now."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Google Considers Charging For AI-Powered Search More

Google Considers Charging For AI-Powered Search

Comments Filter:

  • Please take it away... Now (Score:3)

    by nevermindme ( 912672 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @09:12AM (#64369434)
    It is a feature nobody wanted. Give it another decade to bake and teach it compare and contrast.
  • I dont care about the AI search, I would just like to get an answer to my search that includes 20 pages of garbage links.

  • That should mean I can opt not to use it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @09:16AM (#64369444)

    Good. That's the best thing I've heard about Google AI search this month.

    • What makes you think you're in control?

      • I know I'm not--I've seen my control of Google search slipping away for some years now. I'm just happy not to be forced to take another giant step on that path.

      • What makes you think you're in control?

        Because if google charges my credit card without me explicitly opting into the Google AI search, a payment dispute will be having a conversation with their tactics?

    • Yuppers. It's not worth it to me free. And I can use other search engines, at least pretending I have a choice, as if I have much choice in anything I acquire.

  • Curent Google search is pretty much worthless due to the endless Sponsored" and completely unrelated to original, search, results

    • The results are horrible, now. Search for anything political and you get the most bland, mainstream, thoughtless articles (mostly from the political Left end of the spectrum). They are clearly filtering out results from any sites they don't agree with and the list appears to be very long. If you search for anything about software or OS issues, you get the same Experts Exchange and for-$$$ links. Honestly, I've been comparing them to Yandex (how the mighty have fallen) and in many cases, the results from Yan

    • > and completely unrelated to original

      I searched for a kernel error message and half way down there were news links about some shit people were saying about Israel.

      wtf, seriously.

      I'm still miffed this.exact.phrase stopped working in 2011.
       

  • Google datamines me six ways from Sunday, and their search results are getting worse over time. Hell, the advance search inputs have gotten worse, too. And they're censoring returns on top of that.

    I'm not going to pay them a single cent for a new service when they can't even maintain the old one. And I don't want a fuzzy AI summary anyway, I want a very obviously deterministic list of useful links.

    • It also makes no sense sometimes,Google knows I'm in the UK from the geo location stuff, but occasionally serves up ads for health related insurance etc. (something for which I have absolutely no requirement, in any shape or form) or other US specific products. Bah!

      • I can use the google.ca url, select the 'tools: country:Canada' option, and search for something I want to buy using Canada as one of the search terms, and I still get fucking links to US companies with pricing in USD... Who don't even ship to Canada.

        Not to mention Google more or less ignores quoted phrases now and searches for the individual words regardless.

        I'll jump ship as soon as there is a better option. I don't think it'll be a matter of someone doing it better but of Google continuing to get worse

        • Forgot to mention, I use the .co.uk domain & UK etc. still get health insurance ads, which are pointless to me in the UK. Google used to show relevant ads, once upon a time and, quite often I would buy stuff.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Of course Google may just hold a low option of you and are assuming that either you are too stupid to know you don't need US health care insurance, or think you may actually believe people who say the USA is number one and that you are planning to move there. So don't worry, I think they give you a free gun when you earn citizenship there, right?

  • Following their change to "scrolling results on a single page" I now find Google search wholly unusable. Previously you'd get a list of paged results so, if you weren't looking to buy something (which I'm not 90% of the time) then you'd use a sort of "binary chop" to get to the first page of results you were interested in.

    e.g. After you got the first page back you could then jump directly to, say, page 5. If this was still full of promoted advertising/SEO crap then you could jump to page 10. If this contained decent results you could back jump to page 8, if not you could jump forward to page 15 etc. Repeat a few times until you found the first page of reasonable results after which you could start going through them a page at a time - eventually finding what you're interested in.

    Now with the "all results scroll on a single page" model you can only sequentially add the next page of results to the current page. By the time you've clicked "more results" a good few times the page has become a bloated mess which gets slower and slower and it's simply impossible to find any decent results. The more obscure the thing you're interested in the worse this gets.

    So, Google search is currently totally unusable for me :(

  • I pay for GPT4 and use it for 80% of my searches. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Press2ToContinue ( 2424598 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @09:28AM (#64369478)
    I rarely use Google any more. Using GPT4 is the equivalent of a focused, conversational search. It is trained on about the same data from the web, but I don't have to scan through pages of results and websites to assess the veracity and relevance for my purpose. Indeed, if it is a code-related query for even a mildly popular language, it can provide results in a customized code response, which is more than what Google can do. And it does it without any ads or distracting page formatting, and provides accurate links and citations so I can jump to the original page should I want to read more.

    All in all, I think Google is trying to stem the tide away from other LLMs siphoning off users away from Google while still maintaining their current user base, and I frankly don't think they will be able to do - their day in the sun is ending and the dawn of the LLMs has begun.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Don't worry, they will realize they need a revenue stream and enshitify it soon enough.

      I've been trying Google's AI for code stuff. It's not great. Maybe my queries are too obscure though.

      • I really wonder what form the enshitification will take. Will they offer to "influence" the AI bot with undue preferences? Will they sell your search queries and prompts (probably already do)? Will they force the bot to tell you about it's sponsors before giving you the answer? They've hyped AI so much, expectations are pretty high. What will happen if the results from these AI searches aren't good enough to satisfy users, but investors keep pounding the table for monetization? Nothing good, IMO.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ukoda ( 537183 )
      Ohhh, how sweet to meet some so naive. Cast your mind way back to when you first used YouTube, cool ad free TV. But once they though you were hooked the ads start. Just a few at first, and then so many it was unwatchable.

      With your ad free GPT4 they are simply waiting until they think the have you hooked to start feeding you ads. What's that you say? Your paying a subscription so you won't get ads? That's cute, so innocent. First the 'sponsored' ads focused to 'help you', but don't worry there is a

  • They'd have to pay me a lot to use Google with or without "AI".

  • and they want you to pay for it on top of it.

    Welcome to the GoogleNet.

    • Welcome to the GoogleNet.

      After the oauth2 coup, it looks like you are right. Google wants to break email so they can capture more refugees with Gmail. OAuth2 is pure garbage that does nothing to help security, but helps Google force more users onto their platform along with DKIM-enforcement. DKIM isn't stupid (though we don't need the coercion to do the right thing with it), but OAuth2 is batshit crazy.

  • Charge me to deliver the search experience and results Google provided before it tried Google+ and broke the query language.

  • after seeing reddit and stack overflow moderators cry after someone changed the EULA and claimed they are "unpaid workers" I feel morally safe expecting to be paid for using free services from now on

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )
      That's why I've been using Bing more and more. Better results than Google, and they pay you! (In credits you can spend in their shop)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        MAGAtard!

  • Google is considering charging for new "premium" features powered by generative artificial intelligence,

    The only questions I have are:

    1. Google is still in the search business? I thought they went to sales only.
    2. People still use Google Search? Isn't that like opening a coupon book when you want a dictionary?
    3. If they charge for it, will they stop throwing out good search results and still give you only the poisoned SEO results for things that have zero to do with what you were searching for? I searched for (as an example, not real) "No dust or scent Cat Litter" and got four pages of ads for everything but

    • 1. Only because they haven't left it yet.
      2. Still give the best results. All search all like this already or will be soon to copy Google.
      3. Yes.

  • middleware is coming in like the tide (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @09:45AM (#64369528)
    Actually, it's already in, but more is coming daily with "AI". The integration of large systems into "decision support systems" removes your agency to do what you want. What you do now must fit the use cases of the middleware or you don't get services. For instance, Microsoft is removing that dumb dumb program ... wordpad? Whatever you call it the plain text editor.. they are adding spellcheck... but all the functions of copiliot will be/are being incorporated sooner or later, indexing your files, uploading to the cloud, etc..You won't know and since you're balls deep in Microsoft services, you won't be going anywhere... We're taking care of you, You can trust us.... Next week ... you don't need local storage anymore ... also thank you for feeding our AI all your data. MMM MMMM...

    So, parallel concept: Google is taking away what you actually want and replacing it with what they actually want, so they can feed the AI monster more data.
    Your input not require, not desired, you're getting what we give you. You will use it, meatbag. MBA's everywhere are "saving money" and "improving efficiency" by rushing into AI mediated systems without any safeguards. It's happening everywhere,

    Why did 90% of the American pharmacies fail last month? They all use the same homogenous systems, based on the aforementioned Kool Aid. Once we all get on the same systems we are all vulnerable to the same malicious software tactics.
  • Wants to CHARGE for stealing information to sell to advertisers? No. I won't be using the Paywalled Google search. In fact I already don't, I use Brave search,

  • Google search has become decreasingly useful

    If they believe in AI they should want to let you use their search for free in an attempt to make it more useful again.

    What's their end game? Only people who pay get useful search results? Or just people dumb enough to pay are dumb enough to use their crappy AI search tool?

  • Google has been taking our search queries and other data and turning it into targeted advertising dollars for years. I don't recall receiving a check. Why do they think they can charge us for using one of their "data collection portals" ? I'll use something else if that's where they're going.

  • The quality is _that_ bad? (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday April 04, 2024 @10:32AM (#64369650)

    One of the last-ditch techniques for making something perceived as "valuable" is to charge for it. I had no idea that Google "AI" search was _this_ bad. So far I thought that search was the one thing Artificial Incompetence could do reasonably well. Apparently not.

  • It's not like the passive-aggressive 'searches' the other AI do.

  • they will still use their AI, but modify your search request to give you only ads or mediocre results.

    What I would pay for is a search engine that only included information from non-commercial fact based sites that ignored all the SEO BS.
  • No one knows Search Generative Experience even exists right now. I know it's expensive and possibly can't stay free indefinitely, but this isn't the time. They don't have the mindshare. It's a good product----frankly one of the few that's clearly using LLMs the "right" way----but it needs (a) more exposure and (b) a stronger value proposition before hiding it in Google One makes any sense. Of course, the MBAs will probably do it anyway; they've been doing the short-term thinking thing for a while now.
  • If the paywall version is an alternative to their ad spam, SEO crap, then I would gladly pay it. But if it's just an additional text box with summary at the top on top of all their glorious garbage, hell to the no

  • ...7 customers. Most don't find it valuable enough to pay. Maybe if it grows significantly better, but until then there isn't enough demand and there are existing alternatives. It'll cost more to implement a billing system for it than revenues will cover. It's like my $200 lemon-aide stand where I only sold 13 cups of lemon-aide. (Maybe the econ lesson was worth the $187?)

  • and charging you a premium ofr a product that is riddled with ads and paid for placements.
  • It's pretty clear by now that Zuck, Bozo, Felon, these guys are the real winners. We need a concise 'garch name, help me out here. Thank Steve Jobs for pressing your lazy button. People these day don't want to think, prefer software do it. Thinking is for losers, seems to be a common attitude these day. Looks like no one can apply reason, analyze, and draw conclusions anymore. It's too hard. So, the nerd-o-garchs have trained you well.

    The internet started like the free buffet at a strip club, then became "f
  • Great, i don't want that garbage ass shit anyways. Paywall it and don't offer it to me. Or maybe offer it via a means i can adblock. Fuck stupid AI bullshit

Slashdot Top Deals

Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year. -- C.N. Parkinson

Close