It’s not hard to see how Google’s AI Strategy isn’t working out as the company had hoped.
January 15, 20251:55 PM EST 0 comments
Google quietly raised prices for its Workspace plans aimed at businesses, but now they all include Gemini AI. Previously, Gemini was an extra charge. Now, all plans come with AI tools at a single price.
It’s cheaper for companies that already pay for the Gemini AI Add-on. But it’s more expensive for everyone else. These business-oriented plans are now on average $2 more expensive. If you multiply that by 500 employees, it’s a $1,000 increase per month.
It’s a strange shift, which suggests that Google priced its AI products too high when they launched. Now, Google is reformatting its website as it struggles with getting people to use Gemini. Gemini used to cost around $26 per monthly add-on in Canada. Individuals will still have to pay $26 per month for access to AI tools. However, AI is included in all Google Workspace plans for business, enterprise and education.
Google states in the same press release announcing the reworked plan that over 100,000 customers have already used Gemini AI tools within Workspace. However, I find this number to be quite low for an almost two-year old Google product.
This seems to be the core problem Google has with Gemini. No one wants to use it. We’ve seen, for example, the company making Gemini Live free. It gives the impression that Google is struggling to get users to adopt its AI tools.
The new push to include all Google Workspace plans will allow more people to use the tools, but it is annoying that they will all become more expensive. If only 100,000 customers use AI tools, millions of people are paying for them but not using them. Personal users are still required to pay high prices for the features of their Gmail accounts and Android assistants. Google’s new pricing structure for Gemini is a great step forward, but now that it has restructured the price structure for businesses, we can only hope that they will also start including Gemini features into regular Google One accounts. Many users will be upset if the price increases are applied to all users.
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