Tag: google

In the past decade, many services and products have switched from a pay-once model to a subscription-based model. Sometimes, you get a choice, say between the pay-once version of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365. Even then, companies usually tweak the deals to raise the attractiveness of the subscription-based product. Microsoft, for example, does not add new features to the pay-once version of Microsoft Office after release.

Many companies favor subscription-based services. They generate a steady-stream of income, bind the customer to the service, and make it easier to raise the price or change the deal favoring their side. Amazon did the latter when it introduced ads for all Prime Video subscribers and recently announced that more ads are coming.

Some companies raise the product of their services almost every year. Google, for example, just announced another round of price increases for Nest Aware.

Google Next devices are smart home products, think thermostats, smoke detectors, smart doorbells or speakers, designed to give home owners more control over their homes, even when they are not at home.

A subscription is required to take full advantage of Next devices. Nest Hub Max, for instance, offers basic motion detection only, if you have no subscription. If you want an upgrade to that, which also includes seen and face alerts, smoke and CO alarm and glass break sound detection, and more, you need a subscription.

Google informs subscribers currently that the price of a subscription is going up again this August. The two products, Nest Aware and Nest Aware Plus, will cost $10 and $20 per month respectively, up from $8 and $15, which customers pay right now.

The last price hike happened in September 2023, when Google raised the price from then $6 and $12 per month to the price that it charges currently.

So, the price went up from $6 to $10 and from $12 to $20 per month in about two years. Is it the last increase? Very unlikely.

With hardware products, it is more challenging to switch, as you invested into the hardware already. While you can cancel a Netflix or Microsoft 365 subscription at any time and without much issues, with Nest and other hardware products, you’d either end up with some dumb bricks or hardware that is less efficient or useful.

The only options that we have is to vote with our wallets. Either do not buy the product in first place or end the subscription, if it gets out of hand. Yes, that could mean ending up with products you bought that will be of little use to you in the future.

Now You: do you have subscriptions currently? If so, which and why? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

When you run a search on Google, you may get an AI Overview at the top of the results. Google announced an expansion of the AI-powered feature to roll out in more markets and for more languages.

Google revealed information about its AI plans yesterday on its Ads & Commerce blog. There, the company noted that AI Overviews is “one of the most successful launches in Search in the past decade”. Google saw a 10 percent increase in usage of Google for queries that displayed the overview generated by Google’s Gemini AI.

As a consequence, Google is expanding ads across AI Overviews. In particular, Google says that it is expanding ads in AI Overviews in English to more countries on mobile and desktop, and Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews for desktop users in the United States.

Ads will also be tested in AI Mode, which Google calls its “most powerful AI search” feature. AI Mode is limited to Google Search users from the United States at the time of writing.

In other words: expect (more) advertisement in AI Overviews and other AI tools in the coming months and years.

Clearly, running AI is expensive. While companies like Google, Meta, or Microsoft have the means to sustain development, infrastructure and operations, the clear goal is the direct or indirect generation of revenue from these services.

Direct revenue may come from subscriptions or ads, indirect revenue from using data for training or other purposes.

The consequences are clear: users should expect to see more and more ads baked into AI services. This looks like a testing ground currently, but it looks similar to how Google introduced ads in search. First, some ads, separated clearly from search results. Now, Google users get more ads than organic search results in some queries and there is no longer a clear distinction between the two.

Now You: do you use AI services? What is your take on ads being integrated into those?

You may recall that Alphabet is currently under investigation in the United States and that a potential breakup of the company is looming over the company’s head.

Suggestions include selling of Google Chrome and Android, or separating the ad business are all on the table.

The Verge reports that Alphabet has made a counteroffer. Clearly, the company does not want a splitting-up. The counteroffer does not include the splitting up of any company services or products.

Instead, Alphabet suggests the following remedies:

• Browser companies should get more flexibility and the ability to change default providers every 12 month period.
• Android device makers should also get more flexibility and options to preload any apps.

The first suggestion affects Mozilla and Apple for the most part. Both have search deals in place with Google that give them millions or billions each year for making Google Search the default search engine on their respective platforms.

With Google’s suggestions, Mozilla could sign search engine deals for different platforms. It might not be that beneficial to Mozilla, however, as there are not many search engine companies out there with the financial power to agree to deals.

In fact, Microsoft with its Bing search engine may be the only one that might be a potential partner.

To make matters worse, it may also give Google more of a bargaining chip when brokering deals with the organization.

For Android, device manufacturers would have more freedom to launch their devices with multiple search engines or apps. Google is enforcing certain rules right now, if device manufacturers want to include the company’s apps on their devices.

Closing Words

Google would retain control over all of its properties, if its proposed remedies would be found acceptable. Chrome or ads, for instance, are not even mentioned by Google.

What do you think of this? Should Alphabet be broken up? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Google Search has been the major search engine in most regions for a long time. While it has changed a lot under the hood in that time, it is still used by many as the main tool for searches.

AI is threatening Google’s search dominance. While it is too early to tell how good AI-based search engines will be in comparison, Google is clearly aware of the danger.

To counter this threat, Google has started to push AI into Google Search. The main user-facing feature is AI Overviews, which displays a summary based on a user’s search query at the very top of the search results.

It works similarly to how Brave Search and other search engines display AI-generated results at the top. Verdict is still out on the usefulness of the solution.

File uploads

Soon, Google users might also be able to upload files directly on Google Search to ask questions about the uploaded file. Upload a financial report, and you might ask questions about it once Google has processed the file.

This is not a new feature, considering that several AI solutions can do the same already. Even Google has a very basic file upload feature baked into search already. You can upload an image to Google Images to find out matching images online. While no AI is involved, it at least highlights that Google has the technology in place already.

X user Khushal Bherwani published an image and a short video that shows the new feature in action. It seems to work as one might expect: you activate the file upload button on Google Search, pick a file that you want analyzed, and hit the upload button.

It is likely only available for certain file types. The video shows that the feature is not complete at this point. The upload appears to have worked in the video, but Google Search did not answer the question that the user asked about the file.

Closing Words

It remains to be seen if the feature will roll out to more users in the coming months or if it gets pulled before release. There is also the question of its usefulness and whether users feel comfortable uploading files to Google.

What is your take on the feature? Would you upload files to Google to get the chance to ask an AI question about it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.