Google Workspace AI is now free to paying business customers

If you want to use all of Google’s AI features within Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and more in the Workspace suite, you previously had to shell out $20 per user per month for the Gemini Business plan. On Tuesday, it’s free. Google is bringing all of its AI features to the Workspace app at no extra cost as it continues to race with Microsoft, OpenAI, and others to build the AI-powered office suite of the future.

There’s a catch, though: in making this change, Google has raised the price of all Workspace plans. Jerry Dischler, Google’s president of cloud applications, told me that companies will pay roughly $2 more per month per user for the AI-enabled Workspace than they have in the past. (The numbers aren’t exact, because companies have complex and different contracts, but the base subscription price was $12 a month and is now $14.)

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. . It also comes with access to the Gemini bot itself, which is perhaps Google’s most powerful AI tool; the bot can do the standard chatbot stuff but also help you find information, find all your stuff, and more.

Dischler points out that Google is the majority vertically integrated The AI ​​product is there now, but that’s important if people are using the whole system. Now, everyone can. “Most of the time, when we talk to companies that are using AI, their biggest hurdle is cost factors,” he said. “That’s why they keep coming in. Like, ‘wow, this is a lot of money, and let’s prove the value.’ Alright, now you’ve got the AI. You have value.” He said that various app roadmaps are changing again, and that new features will start shipping soon.

Google isn’t the only company to back its AI up-charge: Microsoft announced in November that its own Copilot Pro AI features, previously also a $20 monthly upgrade, would part of a standard Microsoft 365 subscription. Right now, that’s only for Personal and Family subscriptions, and only in certain areas. But these companies all understand that this is their chance to teach people new ways to use their products and win new customers in the process. They are betting that the cost of rolling out all these AI features at all will be worth it in the long run.