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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

The subsidies deployed by the industry are so massive I don't even know if consumers need public assistance here. It's kinda like the gov was subsidizing web hosting or basic banking. The price for a regular consumer already barely hovers above zero.

Just look at this list of services included in Google's AI Pro subscription[1]. Google took everything it could think any consumer might need and bundled for $20/mo. There's even $10 GCP credit (that you can use for AI API calls).

[1] https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/14534406?hl=en

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It's a ploy to drive adoption. Once it's considered essential they can turn the screws in massive contracts with governments, big enterprises, universities, and public school systems. Probably some genuine competition on price, but the equilibrium price is probably below cost and not sustainable.

First step of enshittification :)

Which definition of that are you using?

Huh?

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

This is at the “good to their users” phase - giving free access to an otherwise non-free product is being good to them, right?

If only it came with YouTube Premium... Most of that list is just AI in existing products which is not all that interesting. You get better value and models through ChatGPT or Claude especially if you are a developer

It does come with a discount for YouTube Premium.

I use a workspace account in order to have my own domain and it seems like Google AI Pro is not even an option for me lol

That's not close to "everything ... any consumer might need". It's a list of useless things, other than 5TB of storage. Granted, cloud storage typically sells for more than this, so they are offering Gemini for something like -$15/mo.

Thank you for this comment and holy cow, I have the pro subscription and didn't know it came with that many bells.

I had a free 3 month trial I just terminated. I deemed it too expensive.

Free is too expensive? Were you expecting to get paid for using it?

It should be understood that he canceled before Google started charging him.

As a Student, I got 1 year for free. Purchasing a new Pixel will also give 1 year for free.

The government does subsidize basic banking, though?

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