When ChatGPT burst onto the scene followed by several other generative AI-powered chatbots, there was a lot of buzz around how they invalidated traditional search engines like Google and provided a much better experience with getting your questions answered.
There's some validity to this claim, so even upon developing and releasing Gemini, Google still has more plans for AI search. There's nothing concrete yet, but it seems the tech giant is looking towards the possibility of a premium tier of Google Search that incorporates AI.
This Would Mark Google's First-Ever Paid Search Product
It is extremely easy to take Google Search for granted. It's been around since I was a kid and has been almost unchanged in its core functionality since then, at least from the perspective of a user. Plus, it has always been free despite being something that many of us use daily. It's been free because Google makes money off of ads, but as a user, I really couldn't mind. That might change to some degree, though.
According to Financial Times, Google is talking about a new product called Search Generative Experience, which will be an AI-powered search engine. It won't be a replacement for the regular Google Search we all know and love, and will instead be a premium search feature that will cost you money to use. This would be the first time that a Google Search product would be a paid option, so it'll be pretty interesting if they follow through.
However, once again, this feature doesn't seem anywhere close to being deployed, as Google engineers are still working on “the technology needed to deploy the service.” It'd be nice to have some Google Gemini features integrated into a more accessible Google Search engine.
Google Reportedly Sees ChatGPT As A “Competitive Threat”
AI is taking the world by storm. I occasionally use ChatGPT to get answers that tend to be a little tough to pinpoint through regular search methods (though you should always double-check; AI chatbots confidently spew misinformation a lot of the time). However, despite the AI revolution, Google's search platform still remains the same. Sure, they've released Google Gemini, but it is yet to command as much notoriety as OpenAI's take.
For this reason, it isn't surprising that the world's biggest search engine feels the need to cement its position at the top and future-proof the platform. This would mark one of the largest changes to Google's search engine for as long as I can remember, but it isn't hard to understand why they feel this could potentially be necessary, especially if they like the market share they have.
Remember that paying for a premium search experience with AI wouldn't be such a deviation from the norm. You might know that other AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot have paid tiers to choose from, so Google's Search Generative Experience wouldn't particularly knock them out of the race (for as long as Google Gemini remains a free option). We may need to wait a few years before we hear anything official about this.
