Google makes AI standard in Workspace in productivity battle with Microsoft

January 16, 2025 12:05 PM

Gemini for Workspace in action translating emails in Gmail

Google has expanded its AI tools to all Workspace Business and Enterprise applications at no extra cost — though plan prices have increased.

Previously, subscribers paid an additional $20 per user per month for full AI access on top of the $12 standard plan.

Google has now removed the $20 fee but raised the base price to $14 per user per month, granting access to AI tools powered by its Gemini foundation models for a modest increase.

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Subscribers would gain access to AI-powered productivity tools in applications like Docs, Sheets, and Gmail, helping to summarise hefty reports or create professional-sounding content.

Google’s AI can also take notes during meetings in Meet or Chat, and even enhance your in-meeting audio and video.

Jerry Dischler, president of cloud applications at Google said the expansion of its AI tools would provide every business “the tools they need to innovate for tomorrow”.

“By removing the need to pay for an add-on to access our latest generative AI capabilities, we're simplifying our plans and pricing to bring the added value of Google AI to all Workspace customers,” Dischler wrote in a blog post.

The pricing changes take effect for new customers from January 16. Price changes for existing Workspace plan subscribers will update from March 17, or at their respective renewal date, whichever is later.

Google confirmed that very small business customers will not be subject to the pricing changes "at this time".

Google’s AI Workspace comes as it’s gearing up to take on Microsoft, with its rival working to expand its Copilot offerings.

Microsoft bundled its Copilot Pro AI offering into Microsoft 365 subscriptions last year and has pushed hard to encourage consumers to purchase Copilot+ PCs, which come embedded with AI productivity tools.

Google’s productivity tools are powered by its Gemini family of AI models, which can handle multimodal inputs, meaning users can input prompts spanning, text, video, images, and code.

The tech giant said data used to interact with Workspace’s AI tools is secure and won’t be used to train its Gemini models or used for ad targeting.

The Gemini-powered AI tools only retrieve relevant data that the user has permission to access, and a user’s existing Workspace data security and sovereignty controls are automatically applied.