Google has quietly raised the prices of its business-facing Workspace plans, but they now all include Gemini AI tools. Previously, you needed to pay extra to include Gemini, now, all plans include AI tools for one simple price.

This makes it cheaper for any companies already paying for the Gemini AI add-on, but more expensive for pretty much everyone else. These business-facing plans have gotten roughly $2 more expensive on average. So, scaled up through a company of 500 people, that’s a price increase of $1,000 per month.

This is a weird shift that suggests Google priced its AI tools too high at launch. Now, it’s reformatting as it struggles to actually get people to use Gemini. Previously, in Canada, Gemini was priced around $26 per month as an add-on. Individuals still need to pay that much for personal access to the AI tools, but AI is bundled into all business, enterprise, and education Google Workspace plans.

In the same press release that outlines the reworked plans, Google mentions that over 100,000 customers are already using Gemini AI tools in Workspace, but to me, this number is actually quite low for a two-year-old Google product of this magnitude.

At the end of the day, this seems to outline Google’s core problem with Gemini. No one seems to want to use it. For example, we’ve seen the company make Gemini Live free already. It paints a picture of Google struggling to get people to adopt its AI tools.

This new push into all levels of Google Workspace will put the tools into more people’s hands, but it feels annoying that all plans will get more expensive as a result. If only 100,000 customers are using AI tools, there will be millions who are paying for them and not using them. On top of that, personal users still need to pay super high prices to use the features in their personal Gmail and as an assistant on Android phones. Now that Google has revamped the cost structure of Gemini for businesses, hopefully, it will start to include Gemini features in regular Google One accounts as well. That said, a lot of users will be angry if there’s a similar price hike for all users.

Source: Google