perplexity already has a subscription plan...
When Google was announced in the early 1990s the founders said they wanted to provide a search engine for the academnic realm, transparent and free from the influence of advertising. Google's original "business plan" was to license their search engine to corporations. Obviously that did not work. Netscape had a similar plan for its Navigator web browser.
No doubt some of these "AI" companies believe they can license to companies as a viable business. Meanwhile, they may end up like Netscape.
If ads are and always were a viable "business model" then why do these companies try to pursue licensing first.
Perhaps some myopia is created by mesmerising effects of certain selected companies, e.g., Google, that have operated their "ads business" free from meaningful competition or regulation, leading to immense growth and market domination, the later maintained long-term by anticompetitive behaviour.
They could choose to be viable in other ways.
Doesn't sound like just past glory.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/reve...
Turn off the ads (which is visual and aural pollution in 99.99999% of cases) and said company is literally not viable.
We accept ads because we're conditioned to, not because they represent a real business. The vast majority of advertising spend is inefficient and wasteful in terms of ROI. Most advertising in the space show substantially low statistical power, in effect being unable to identify an effect from random noise.[0] This means ROI measures are normally bunk.
Ad-supported businesses are subject wholly to the whims of unrelated companies and people outside their target client base.
We worry about AI slop, rightfully, yet do little to nothing to stop the memetic, exploitative mind virus advertising (and adtech especially) is.
Recommended reading: Existence, David Brin
[0] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/4/1941/191...