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Google is reportedly considering whether it should change its core search business model to start charging for the option of "premium" results.
These results would integrate AI tools more fully and would be different from core search results, which would apparently be unchanged and still available to everyone for free.
It's not so much that Google is looking to gate certain AI features behind a paywall, but rather that it's trying to figure out which of its AI features should be limited to those who pay for its memberships, like Google One.
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The move has been reported by the Financial Times, which says that at least three sources have confirmed the discussions.
While some features are reserved for subscribers, including AI tools while using Google Docs and more, this would arguably be the first time that it locked a new core product behind a subscription.
When Sky News reached out to Google, a spokesperson said: "We're not working on or considering an ad-free search experience. As we've done many times before, we'll continue to build new premium capabilities and services to enhance our subscription offerings across Google."
It rebuts a question that has been picking up steam in the last year or so about the search experience.
Adverts have always been how Google funded its search engine, but plenty of critics feel that search results are now too suffused with these ads, making it harder to sift through to find genuinely helpful or relevant web pages.
The challenge for Google, it would seem, is finding a way to preserve its massive advertising revenue while using AI. For example, when it serves up an "AI-powered snapshot" summarising results, as it's been testing, this result costs it more to generate than a standard one, thanks to the AI processes required.
So, if users also don't scroll as far down the page or click onto a website using Google's own ad-hosting platform, having read the generative text summary without any issue, that presents a small problem for Google of its own making.
Plenty of website owners are also concerned that this could starve them of traffic fairly immediately, so it all adds up to what looks like a pretty significant quandary for the giant search engine.
With additional concerns about reliability and the risk of either misinformation or offensive results being generated by AI, there's a lot to ponder for executives right now.
