[HN Gopher] Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free, but rais...
___________________________________________________________________
Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free, but raising the price
of Workspace
Author : lars_francke
Score : 87 points
Date : 2025-01-15 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Workspace was $12/month, now it will be $14 with AI included. AI
| was $20/month.
|
| Looks like AI as an add-on wasn't selling too well.
| jsheard wrote:
| Users will continue to be beaten with the AI cudgel until
| morale improves.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Ah it's new tech, they just need to get used to it until they
| can't do without!
| paxys wrote:
| Pretty much. A small set of customers weren't willing to pay
| for AI? Now _everyone_ has to pay for AI.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Bob need's that bonus.
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Collective punishment.
| hackmiester wrote:
| Can I pay $20 to keep the version without AI?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Google: Is that a trick question?
| whalesalad wrote:
| Shid. I made the mistake of getting my entire family onto my
| google apps 15+ years ago. Now I am paying for about 8 people
| every month and this will just make it worse.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yes this particular seat price increase might be the one that
| breaks the camel's back
|
| an ignorable monthly credit card charge, to one that has to
| go
| the_snooze wrote:
| >Workspace AI includes things like email summaries in Gmail,
| generated designs for spreadsheets and videos, an automated note-
| taker for meetings, the powerful NotebookLM research assistant,
| and writing tools across apps.
|
| Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon stuck in my ways, but I haven't
| found much compelling value in these use cases in my day-to-day
| work. For summaries and note-taking specifically, I feel they're
| solving the wrong problem: it's not that I have all this
| information that I really want to go through, but it's that I
| have too much information and it's become all noise.
|
| The real solution to too much email is fewer and higher-priority
| emails. The real solution to too many meetings is fewer and more-
| focused meetings. These tools paper over the root cause of the
| problem, which is that people/organizations cannot (or are
| unwilling to) be clear about communication priorities and say
| "maybe this email/meeting isn't a good use of time after all."
| verdverm wrote:
| I agree. I don't want all my existing work apps to take on LLM
| features I don't need.
|
| At the same time, I tried the Gemini Research feature last
| night, via the Gemini webapp, and was resoundingly impressed.
| From a vague description, it can find the open source project I
| was looking for, provided ample links, and a pretty good
| summary of the project.
|
| deets: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42706997
| ape4 wrote:
| I can hardly wait to use it as an excuse. "Oh sorry I didn't do
| that because it wasn't in the AI summary" ;)
| macNchz wrote:
| I find AI meeting transcripts and summaries to be one of the
| most genuinely useful things to come out of this era of LLM
| tools. Being able to see a quick summary of what was decided or
| who was supposed to do what next is just so helpful, either for
| refreshing your memory after the weekend or just because people
| aren't all that great at taking and sharing notes.
| bambax wrote:
| How is AI in email a good thing?!
|
| There's a cartoon going around where in the first frame, one
| character points to their screen and says to another: "AI turns
| this single bullet point list into a long email I can pretend I
| wrote".
|
| And in the other frame, there are two different characters, one
| of them presumably the receiver of the email sent in the first
| frame, who says to their colleague: "AI makes a single bullet
| point out of this long email I can pretend I read".
| hoyd wrote:
| Do you happen to have a link for that comic?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but I too enjoy good web comics.
|
| https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html
| LtWorf wrote:
| This was literally in the initial gmail demo about AI :D
| n144q wrote:
| > I haven't found much compelling value in these use cases in
| my day-to-day work.
|
| If my experience with Microsoft Office Copilot is any
| indication, these features produce very confusing, low-quality
| content if they are not completely wrong and useless. Used it
| once and never touched them again. (My company is still paying
| for this and rolling this out widely despite many reports of
| how unhelpful they are.) I doubt Google Workspace can do any
| better.
| nharada wrote:
| I had a few use cases with searching and organizing emails I
| would have used. For example, I wanted a table of all my Lyft
| rides from a certain year with distances driven, start/end
| locations, cost, etc. All that info is available in the email
| you get after riding, so I figured Gemini could read my emails
| and organize the info.
|
| Turns out it doesn't work at all. It gave me a random selection
| of rides, was missing info in some of them, and worst didn't
| realize it was giving me bad info. Pretty disappointing.
| belval wrote:
| Right now at Amazon we are going through the annual feedback
| cycle where you have to write strengths and growth areas for
| your colleagues. You will usually have to do ~12 of those.
|
| I don't use ChatGPT for those, but it is the epitome of what
| you are describing, people will take a single sentence, ask
| some LLM to blow it up the correct length and in the process
| make it a complete waste of time for everyone.
|
| My guess is that with long-form text losing value due to LLMs,
| we will see a return of very succint 1-2 lines employee
| feedback.
| xnx wrote:
| > we will see a return of very succint 1-2 lines employee
| feedback.
|
| This would be a great outcome in a lot of areas!
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Enshittification #353: solving cuStomers problems has poor ROI
| Kapura wrote:
| can i get a version of gmail and docs without ai? I had to stop
| using google keep because they added a flashy AI button that
| couldn't be removed.
| verdverm wrote:
| I use uBlock to remove UI components that get in the way. It's
| a top feature for me because I can often DNS block many of the
| ads anyway
| Kapura wrote:
| unfortunately, i mainly used it for the android app. i spent
| about an hour trying to figure out any way to disable that ui
| or opt out of the AI shenanigans to no avail.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Can't you use gmail with any MTA? Have they removed imap
| support?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Forcing you to pay for features you never asked for and won't
| use. I'm sure this will work out great for google in the long
| term.
| esperent wrote:
| There's a weird attitude on this site towards AI: if it's for
| coding or science, people generally recognize AI tooling as
| effective, although imperfect, and rapidly improving.
|
| But any suggestion of using AI for business and it seems like
| disdain and dismissal is the majority response.
|
| Don't you think many areas of business - maybe not all areas,
| but a significant amount - will just as much benefit from AI
| tooling as software developers and scientists?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > There's a weird attitude on this site towards AI: if it's
| for coding or science, people generally recognize AI tooling
| as effective, although imperfect, and rapidly improving.
|
| I suspect that this is more of a selection bias thing. AI is
| garbage everywhere, but "AI in tech" posts tend to be
| hopeless abysses that are not even worth engaging with at
| this point. Hence, only the hucksters and grifters remain in
| there.
| redserk wrote:
| This is the camp I'm in. I've given AI the "college try",
| I've tried using in my workflows, and I've found that there
| are some cases where it genuinely has helped. But there is
| far too much drivel and hype.
|
| I want to hear more from the people who've embraced it for
| a year, found it's pitfalls and perks, and reflect on it.
| I'm tired of the treadmill of content from someone who
| signed up for OpenAI on a Monday, used it for a JIRA ticket
| on Tuesday, then rushed to belt out a blogpost about how
| their career is forever changed on Wednesday.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Isn't that always the case with bundles and suites? Google
| Workspace has always been a bundle of products, and few
| actually used every product in the bundle.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Yes, google workspace has never been worth it. The difference
| is that people can easily understand the value of the
| products they aren't using.
| techjamie wrote:
| They kinda already do it with YT Premium/YT Music. I don't have
| anything against YT Music, it's a perfectly fine music service
| from the amount I've used it. But I already have a Spotify with
| my preferred playlists, and I don't really have incentive to
| swap it over aside from maybe saving a handful of dollars a
| month.
|
| Yet if you want ad-free YouTube the proper way, you can't just
| have Music as an option, it's rolled into your cost regardless
| of if you actually plan to use it or not.
| dochtman wrote:
| Makes sense that this is the only way to compete with Microsoft.
|
| (See also how MS attacked Slack by including Teams for "free".)
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Why not compete with microsoft by _not_ pushing AI? This allows
| costs to stay low while making customers happier.
| jsheard wrote:
| Google already spent a lot of money on Gemini and now they
| have to justify it or the shareholders will get mad.
| bbarnett wrote:
| What? Google is absolutely not even remotely concerned with
| such things. Their bring-to-market strategy for products is
| basically "Spend billions a year on developing random
| things" and then "OK, it's been a year, cancel 1/2 of
| them".
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > Their bring-to-market strategy for products is
| basically "Spend billions a year on developing random
| things" and then "OK, it's been a year, cancel 1/2 of
| them".
|
| This evidently doesn't apply to their chatbot efforts.
| htrp wrote:
| lamda, bard, palm (v1 and v2) don't necessarily agree
| with you there
| verdverm wrote:
| A lot of customers want these features (especially those
| people who only work in the browser because their job duties
| are vastly different from the average HN user)
| nkozyra wrote:
| Agree, which is why it was nice(r) as an add-on.
| daveguy wrote:
| Apparently they don't want it if Google had to force the
| feature on everyone to raise revenue.
| verdverm wrote:
| This is likely a misreading from personal preference
|
| Getting these features for $2 instead of $20 likely
| appeals to a lot of people. It's 10% the price and may
| only be one of several reasons for the price increase
| (inflation is likely another)
| atonse wrote:
| I'm honestly getting a bit sick of subscription pricing,
| especially for things like "productivity apps." and G-Suite
| (although sadly the MS alternative isn't any better).
|
| At the end of the day, we just do the same ol' simple word
| processing we've done for the last 20 years.
|
| Are there good corporate email alternatives that just do
| email/calendars and do them well with business-type SLAs? Zoho?
| FastMail?
| hedora wrote:
| In my experience, FastMail has better uptime than any of the
| stuff work relies on. (It feels like one more nine, but I
| haven't checked.)
|
| Maybe you could have them randomly suspend your accounts for a
| few hours here and there to match the public cloud experience.
| :-)
|
| Edit: Here's their outage page, which reports > 2-3 nines for
| most subsystems most months:
|
| https://fastmailstatus.com/
|
| Note that they treat any service degradation as downtime when
| computing 9's. For instance, they had one imap server down
| today, which meant some requests were failing, and that counts
| against their reported numbers.
|
| By this metric: "One machine is failing requests", most of the
| hyperscalers are down all the time.
|
| Regarding actual SLAs with money and stuff: How much is the
| refund worth vs. the cost of downtime?
|
| Edit 2: Take github for example. They have unreported outages
| all the freaking time. Down detector says push/pull has been
| flaky for the last 24 hours, but the official status page says
| all systems operational, with a minor codespace outage
| yesterday.
|
| Compare:
|
| https://www.githubstatus.com/
|
| To:
|
| https://downdetector.com/status/github/
|
| To prove those aren't all false reports, next time they go
| offline for you, go bask in the green light their status page.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Are there good corporate email alternatives that just do
| email/calendars and do them well with business-type SLAs? Zoho?
| FastMail?
|
| There are literally tons of them.
| djhn wrote:
| Zoho's SLA I can't speak to but it's hard to argue against free
| forever, including custom domains. For personal use it's
| perfect and the paid packages are much better value for money
| than Google/Microsoft.
|
| FastMail is wonderfully competent at being an email provider,
| has human support (or advanced enough an AI to fool me) and
| wildcard domains.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Cool, great, fun. I have all of the "generative AI" features
| disabled in Workspace, and now I get to pay more for the
| privilege of keeping them disabled. Thanks, Google!
| echelon wrote:
| Same. This is bullshit.
|
| Nobody on my team uses these features. They're actually quite
| distracting.
|
| Google gets to raise prices under the guise that these are
| improving productivity.
|
| I wish there was a fast and easy alternative. Google has its
| claws in deep.
| seanvelasco wrote:
| I pay for 3 Workspace orgs, and I have Gemini disabled (or still
| not enabled) on all 3 of them. I'm angry that I'll have to pay
| more for features I don't use. Gemini should be an add-on cost,
| not included in the base cost
|
| If they're raising the price of personal GMail, I don't have a
| problem. But Workspace with hundreds of users, now that's a
| problem, because it actually hurts my wallet significantly. When
| this increase comes, I'll have to move elsewhere.
| bbarnett wrote:
| With Amazon as an example for CxOs of the world, sadly, this
| likely won't happen.
|
| Look at Prime. So much crap involved, and quite literally all I
| use it for is lower cost shipping. It's almost on the edge of
| not worth it for me. But I bet from Amazon's perspective, they
| make more with the higher price, even if they lose the bottom
| 10% not willing to spend.
|
| Huh.
|
| Just made me realise, a startup that subscribes to Prime as a
| virtual being, and then splits off each sub-thing for full use
| by separate individuals would be incredibly profitable.
|
| If any form of AI is eventually granted legal personhood,
| Prime's model will collapse.
| navane wrote:
| Loosing the people that actually care about the price/reward
| is a bonus for them, now they have an audience that buys
| superfluous stuff.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I've never had Prime and I get free shipping 100% of the
| time.
|
| You're not paying for lower cost shipping, you're paying to
| turn regular purchases you could wait a few extra days for
| into impulse buys.
| beretguy wrote:
| Any idea where you'll move? I have a nonprofit I want to
| migrate away.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Okay, I have a lot of projects with a couple of email addresses
| attached to their domain name
|
| In the US and European market, this was seen as a bare minimum
| level of professionalism and validation (other markets are more
| advanced on this front and have been on chat apps for the entire
| business for at least a decade)
|
| regardless for email, I had been using Google workplaces for this
|
| What's a cheaper alternative? last time I tried something else I
| found I was vendor locked to google even when trying to accept
| calendar invites from people in other organizations that sent
| google calendar. That was 5 years ago though
|
| some sectors like web3 let you do the whole project with just a
| username on discord/telegram/x but I do want to consider
| migrating my emails away from google workspace now. Its difficult
| to manage even changing the credit cards on file with so many
| projects like if one expires
| maxclark wrote:
| Check out Fastmail
| prmoustache wrote:
| Migadu is cheap and works well for email only.
|
| If you need email + shared calendar/contact the email service
| from infomaniak should do the trick. If you need
| functionalities close to workspace with storage, office suite,
| videocall they have the ksuite service.
| rom16384 wrote:
| Check out MXroute or migadu
| adityapatadia wrote:
| It's time saas apps realise that they can't make 2.5x normal
| license money by just sticking AI to it.
|
| In our SaaS we added it for free. We realised that there is no
| way to sustainably make money off of this in long term.
|
| It's a great feature but not 2.5x price worth feature.
| taeric wrote:
| I can't be alone in not wanting these features? I don't mind them
| being available, but I do fear a nearterm future where they are
| active whether I ask them to be or not.
|
| I remember all of the scorn clippy got years ago. How is this any
| different? I think Inbox was probably more useful, and they
| didn't push it near this hard. :(
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Clippy was better.
| jsheard wrote:
| What are the odds that they will tally that extra $2/user/month
| up as "AI revenue" regardless of how many subscribers actually
| use those features?
| djhn wrote:
| I accidentally started the Gemini-the-product free trial in
| Workspace while trying to find how I could test Gemini-the-model
| in AI studio.
|
| The first task that I asked for it's assistance with, was how to
| disable, cancel or unsubscribe from Gemini-the-product. It
| repeatedly and confidently made up instructions to adjust
| settings that didn't exist in menus that weren't where it said
| they were and provided links to irrelevant documentation.
|
| It was either useless, actively misleading or extremely motivated
| to not be turned off.
|
| Any of those was reason enough not to use it ever again.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| Oh no nobody's buying your ai vaporware, let's make everyone
| suffer!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Investors are the customer, so they are pandering to them by
| shoving AI into everything regardless of resulting
| enshittification. Foie gras AI for the stock price.
| grajaganDev wrote:
| Or a sugar high with a very bad crash.
| 34679 wrote:
| I'm in the middle of a free trial for the Workspace Gemini add-
| on.
|
| It really, really sucks. I've played around with having it make
| tables for Sheets and it frequently gets confused or responds
| with ~"I can't do that, I'm just a LLM", even when feeding it one
| of their suggested examples word for word. Sometimes it's willing
| to iterate, sometimes it refuses. Once it gets confused,the only
| way I've been able to get it working again is by clearing the
| session and starting fresh.
|
| And it's sloooow.
|
| None of this saves me any time or frustration.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess this is why it is being bundled, Google can keep
| working on it with someone else's money, so their profits
| aren't hit. It's telling that the increase is regardless you
| use Gemini or not.
| bcoates wrote:
| Ugh. The "vanity domains for gmail" product i've been buying for
| a long time is really metastasizing into something that's both
| too expensive and actually worse than the free experience,
| wonderful.
|
| It's weird that prediction 8, "Someday [you] will voluntarily pay
| Google for one of their services" has come around full circle to
| "and then you won't anymore, because they've dropped the ball to
| an extent usually associated with the private equity buyout ->
| loot into bankruptcy process"
| jsheard wrote:
| You'll have to rip that band-aid off eventually, may as well
| get it over with. It's only going to get worse.
|
| I switched from G Suite to Fastmail for my custom domain and
| I've been very happy with it.
| blibble wrote:
| if people are worrying about importing their digital lives
| into fastmail from google workspace: you don't need to worry
|
| I had been bitten by bad import tools in the past (e.g.
| Google's)
|
| but fastmail's importer worked flawlessly
|
| for each user transferred, after fastmail's import completed,
| I dumped out their old gmail (using gmail API) and their new
| fastmail (using jmap)
|
| and diffed before/after
|
| result: zero differences
|
| perfect
| chias wrote:
| When I joined fastmail I imported my gmail and also
| configured it to be able to fully use my gmail account via
| IMAP so I wouldn't need to sign into gmail at all.
|
| I was also moving from a gmail address, so next I created a
| label that got attached to any email received to the old
| email address via that IMAP connection, which gave me a
| nice self-maintaining todo list for services that had not
| yet been updated to use a new email address.
|
| I was also surprised by how flawlessly seamless the whole
| process was. It was a big factor in my selection of
| Fastmail over other competitors when I was making the
| decision to leave Gmail.
| chias wrote:
| I made the same switch, and have also loved it. I also much
| prefer the interface to Gmail's. If you've got one account
| and want to configure a bunch of addresses to go to the same
| inbox, it's a no brainer. But if you're actually maintaining
| multiple users, it is not cheap.
|
| Side note it was weird: I found actually signing up to
| Fastmail was physically difficult. Like, pushing the button.
| Once I had the account, it was super easy and felt like
| floating downstream.
| 65 wrote:
| Perhaps now is the time for me to switch my personal email off
| Workspace. I don't use it for Docs or Drive or anything, only
| email.
|
| Does anyone have experience with Amazon WorkMail or similar,
| cheaper services for email?
| cloudking wrote:
| I'm not convinced the "Gemini all the things" strategy was the
| right move with Workspace, they rolled it out so fast which
| indicates that UX research was likely rushed or bypassed
| completely. Had they conducted their typical extensive UXR
| process they would have discovered that the features are not very
| useful being baked into the suite.
|
| Now where I do think there is opportunity is in building out the
| standalone Gemini app, as ChatGPT has proven with their Teams
| product that there is business value in having a dedicated chat
| UI for your business. We are currently subscribed to ChatGPT for
| Teams and use it every day across product and engineering, there
| isn't a need for it to be integrated directly into our
| productivity suite UX, but pulling data out from the suite (e.g
| Google Drive) into the chat UI is helpful. Organizing project
| folders, custom GPTs etc also hold value for us.
| golem14 wrote:
| Do you get the same as with the $20/month onegoogle subscription?
| richbell wrote:
| > [Billing and Service Notice] Google Workspace service and
| pricing updates
|
| > Dear administrator,
|
| > Starting today, your Google Workspace subscription includes new
| AI features designed to help your users improve their
| productivity and innovation. With these changes, we will also be
| updating subscription pricing starting March 17, 2025.
|
| > ...
|
| > These features were previously available only to users with a
| Gemini for Google Workspace Add-on, but now will be included with
| Google Workspace Business Standard plans. You will see these
| features added to your subscription in the coming weeks. Soon,
| you'll get access to even more Gemini features in your Google
| Workspace apps.
|
| > Review the Google Workspace blog announcement to learn more
| about these changes.
|
| > Starting March 17, 2025*, your Google Workspace Business
| Standard subscription price will be automatically updated to
| $14.00 per user, per month with an Annual/Fixed-Term Plan (or
| $16.80 if you have a monthly Flexible Plan).
| grodriguez100 wrote:
| So we don't want to use this, but there is no way to opt out
| and we still have to pay X extra per user :-/
| jakedata wrote:
| Failure is not an option! It is included in the price...
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| The FAQ does clarify that opt-outs are available for the
| functionality itself, but not for the pricing change.
|
| (Disclaimer: Although I have worked for Google in the past,
| that ended almost a decade ago and wasn't in any role related
| to pricing or product decisions about Google Workspace. I
| have no inside info on this announcement and am not speaking
| for Google here.)
| grodriguez100 wrote:
| Sure, but they use the "AI is now available to everyone" to
| justify the price increase.
|
| Opting out of the functionality I don't need is not
| particularly useful (I won't use it anyway) but the thing
| is I will be charged for it anyway.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| I'm certainly not a fan of the decision either.
|
| In those countries where MS has now bundled Copilot Pro
| into Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Plans - not the US
| yet, so far only a few APAC countries like Australia and
| Singapore - it's still possible to get a "Classic"
| version of the subscription at the old price and feature
| set, but only via the cancellation screen, not otherwise
| advertised. I wonder, but certainly do not know, if
| Google has similar plans.
| notatoad wrote:
| watch for google to be very proud of how many users signed up
| for the paid tier of gemeni in their next earnings report.
| dsjoerg wrote:
| So, a 16% price increase and AI is included?
| myko wrote:
| Sounds like a terrible tradeoff
|
| I can't wait for the LLM hype train to die
| foobiekr wrote:
| agreed. making the world worse.
| fishstock25 wrote:
| Not gonna happen.
|
| "I can't wait for the PC hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the internet hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the smartphone hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the EV hype train to die"
|
| I suggest you don't wait too long.
| miltonlost wrote:
| "I can't wait for the Laser Disc hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the Betamax hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the HD-DVD hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the NFT hype train to die"
|
| "I can't wait for the dogecoin hype train to die"
| jakedata wrote:
| We are doing a Gemini POC and this nugget dropped in my lap
| today. We were not entirely unprepared as a result. The default
| level of access is just the interactive chatbot thing. However if
| you enable the Google Workspace extension it will be able to
| search and process all the information stored in your workspace
| account and also any Google Drive files that are shared with you.
| This includes stuff you didn't know you had access to in Shared
| Drives so folks better make sure their permissions are locked
| down. Workspace admins might be advised to turn it off at the org
| level until they understand the ramifications.
| simonw wrote:
| Reminds me of an entertaining story about Microsoft Copilot
| last year, where companies were turning it off because it
| turned out it was TOO good at its job - if any accountant
| anywhere in the company had messed up their SharePoint
| permissions asking "what does everyone at this company earn?"
| would spit out all of the salaries:
| https://simonwillison.net/2024/Aug/23/microsoft-copilot-data...
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I'm on paid Google Workspace for my one-man business : I paid for
| a month of the separate AI add-on but I stupidly agreed to an
| "annual commitment" which means that, even though I don't use the
| AI stuff (it's not particularly useful) I have to keep paying for
| it every month for a whole year! :-(
|
| Anybody know if this means they'll let me off my annual
| commitment now that it's included in the base price?
| Cockbrand wrote:
| > If you previously purchased Gemini for Google Workspace, you
| won't be charged for it after January 31, 2025.
|
| See
| https://support.google.com/a/answer/15400543#zippy=%2Cwhats-...
| KomoD wrote:
| So they're raising prices just because they're now including some
| AI nonsense?
| franczesko wrote:
| Integration will likely be the biggest growth driver for Gemini,
| I guess.
| EspadaV9 wrote:
| "We've invested all the money in AI that no one wants, how do we
| make some of it back?" "Why not raise the price for everyone,
| whether they use it or not?"
| kyleee wrote:
| Somebody got a promotion for this change
| wangii wrote:
| it feels like google in panic mode, the only thing it can think
| of is to put a chatbot everywhere, just b/c it can. I don't see a
| value proposition at all.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| My understanding is that every manager at Google has had one of
| their quarterly goals be to integrate genAI into their team's
| product (regardless of whether it makes sense to) for the past
| several years already, so you're not wrong.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Ah, so it's the new Social Mandate!
| fldskfjdslkfj wrote:
| Isn't that the whole industry right now?
| xnx wrote:
| Google Workspace still seems like an amazing deal compared to
| Slack (for example) which is $15/month.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Does this apply to the legacy free edition? I suspect not, since
| that edition is now only available for personal use and they
| mostly focus on Business and Enterprise use cases, but their
| public guidance isn't very clear. If it does apply, would we
| legacy free edition users be receiving Gemini under the Google
| Workspace Terms of Service preventing them from using our data
| for general AI training, or under the regular Google Terms of
| Service which might allow this?
|
| (Tangent: I say "might allow this" because I don't know to what
| degree EU law requires some additional level of consent beyond
| accepting the Terms of Service for EU-based accounts like mine
| currently is, or requires them to give me an AI-specific opt-out
| despite having a free account. But this announcement doesn't
| change whatever EU law does or doesn't require, so that is
| unrelated to my main questions about which Gemini features will
| apply to the legacy free edition under which Terms of Service
| once this change rolls out.)
| kccqzy wrote:
| There's no legacy free edition for personal use any more. That
| ship sailed in 2022. I do not believe there is a way to have it
| free after 2022. Free plans were converted to Business Starter.
| bombcar wrote:
| They enabled a way to get a free plan of some sort, I still
| have it.
|
| You can't get new ones, but mine keeps existing. For now.
| paxys wrote:
| Did they recently hire some Microsoft PMs?
|
| "Our shiny new product isn't selling. How do we pump up the
| numbers?"
|
| "Bundle it into another popular product, of course."
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| This is how every big tech works. Leech onto high priority
| projects and call it "impact"
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I recently got Gemini Advanced as an additional benefit by virtue
| of having Google One paid storage. I'm shocked this is being
| given away for free, because it is now a seriously major part of
| my work. I literally have an Open window all day long interacting
| with it. It does make me wonder how much they are losing
| (investing) on giving all this inference away for free. Also
| makes me wonder what they are getting back aside from
| loyalty/data/?
|
| I always felt ripped off by the 5TB/10TB plans
| (https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0) but
| now I find it to be a bargain with Gemini bundled in.
| smithcoin wrote:
| FYI If you want to turn this off in workspace you'll need to go
| here https://admin.google.com/ac/managedsettings/47208553126 and
| here https://admin.google.com/ac/managedsettings/793154499678.
| Animats wrote:
| Free, for only $2 per month!
|
| Plus Google gets to use your data for training. That has
| interesting implications. What goes in as training data often
| comes out later as replies to questions.
| corndoge wrote:
| I don't see anything in the article that says they train on
| your data, source?
| phoe18 wrote:
| > Your content is not human reviewed or used for Generative AI
| model training outside your domain without permission.
|
| https://support.google.com/a/answer/15706919?hl=en-IN
|
| Your statement is not accurate based on the Workspace docs.
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