Gemini Advanced, Google’s most powerful chatbot yet, launched today behind a paywall. It costs $19.99 a month in a new tier of the Google One subscription plan known as AI Premium. It combines access to the new chatbot with existing Google One offerings like 2 terabytes of extra storage, a VPN, and other perks. AI Premium is similar in price to OpenAI’s $20 a month ChatGPT Plus, but includes Google One benefits that otherwise cost $9.99 a month.
Expanding its subscription empire that is generating $15 billion in sales on an annual basis from Google One and other offerings would help Google make up for the stalling fortunes of one part of its ad business. The unit that sells ads on partner apps and websites brings in annual revenue of about $30 billion, but has been squeezed by rivals and new rules on data collection imposed by mobile platforms such as Apple and lawmakers in Europe.