Google One Surpasses 100 Million Subscribers After Adding AI Option

Google One , the tech giant’s subscription program, has surpassed 100 million subscribers.

“We just crossed 100M Google One subscribers! Looking forward to building on that momentum with our new AI Premium Plan (launched yesterday) offering AI features like Gemini Advanced, plus Gemini in Gmail, Docs + more coming soon,” Sundar Pichai , CEO of Google and Alphabet , said in a Friday (Feb. 9) post on X, formerly Twitter.

We just crossed 100M Google One subscribers! Looking forward to building on that momentum with our new AI Premium Plan (launched yesterday) offering AI features like Gemini Advanced, plus Gemini in Gmail, Docs + more coming soon. https://t.co/m7zAVop7P6 pic.twitter.com/sMdwJeq0iU

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 9, 2024

A Google One subscription offers members cloud storage and device backup; online safety features like VPN and dark web report; and other benefits like Google Photos editing features and Google Store rewards, according to the subscription program’s website .

Pichai’s announcement comes a day after the company unveiled a new Google One AI Premium Plan that includes all the benefits of the Google One Premium Plan and adds access to Gemini Advanced , a new chatbot that gives users access to Google’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) model, Ultra 1.0.

In addition, subscribers to that new $19.99-per-month plan will soon be able to use Gemini in Google apps like Gmail, Docs, Slides and Sheets.

The AI boon has helped boost subscriptions at Google. During a Jan. 30 earnings call, Pichai said that subscriptions reached $9 billion in quarterly revenues in the December period, have reached $15 billion annualized, and are up fivefold since 2019.

That accelerated growth “was driven by our Gen AI and product leaderships,” Pichai said during the call.

Google’s launch of a paid chatbot subscription follows the runaway success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus. OpenAI saw demand for its subscription surge so quickly that the company could not accommodate the demand. In mid-November, the company paused signups, reopening them a month later.

Microsoft’s AI chatbot is gaining subscribers as well. It was reported in November that the company could see more than $10 billion in annualized revenue by 2026 after the November launch of its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI for its Office app business subscribers.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that generative AI has taken off exponentially, with the neural networks and generative pre-trained transformers behind applications like ChatGPT attracting millions of users and developers.

Meanwhile, large language models (LLMs) interpret and generate normal human conversation, powering new interfaces, according to “ Preparing for a Generative AI World ,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration.