A new report in the Financial Times claims that Google is considering bundling enhanced, AI-powered search tools as part of its premium subscription offering.

Sources familiar with the proposal allegedly told the Financial Times that while Google’s main search engine would remain free to use, the company will start charging a fee for additional services – though it should be noted that ads will still appear in the legacy and premium search offerings.

The rise of ChatGPT and big tech’s inevitable scramble to integrate generative AI into their own suite of products has thrown up specific challenges to Google’s once monolithic search engine. Firstly, genAI provides direct answers to search queries. Secondly, as analysts have noted, if Google were to integrate similar tech into its search offerings, it could affect their ad business if AI-generated answers provide a more complete overview that doesn’t require click-throughs.

Similarly, the idea of negating click-throughs in a user journey also puts online publishers and outlets at risk if AI chatbots harvest information from their sites.

A Busy Week for Google

The tech giant hit the headlines on Tuesday (2 April) when it agreed to delete billions of data records after plaintiffs accused Google of tracking users who thought they were privately browsing the internet.

The lawsuit, which was brought up in California, US, claimed that Google’s analytics and cookies improperly tracked users even when they were using ‘Incognito’ or ‘private’ browsing mode.

The lawsuit sought $5bn (£3.98bn) in damages, seeking recompense for breaches of user privacy.

Google is already beginning to update its disclosures about what it collects in ‘private’ browsing modes, but the lawsuit will allow users to block third-party cookies for five years when they are in Incognito mode.

Despite these concessions, Google has maintained that the lawsuit is meritless.

“We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said. “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

However, documents revealed in the court case showed conversations between Google employees calling Google Chrome’s Incognito mode “effectively a lie,” according to the court filing.

Recommended reading

• Google to Ditch Third-Party Cookies in Chrome by 2020
• Google Facing $5BN Fine for Incognito Mode Data Tracking, Court Rules
• ICO Urges App Developers to Prioritise User Privacy

The new disclosure reveals that Google does track user data even when they use private settings, but the mode means that browsing activity is not saved to the machine being used.

While Google did try to get the case dismissed, Judge Yvonne Rogers kept the company in court, saying that it did not seem users consented to the tracking of their data in private browsing mode.

Google has also said they are trailing a tool that would automatically block third-party cookies for all Google Chrome users, which would change the data tracking landscape as a whole.