We could not imagine if Google charged a fee for you to enter a query into its search box? Contrary to popular belief, it is not impossible to survive without Google. Google doesn’t have to charge their searches as their money does not come from the search but majorly due to ad revenue among a few other things. Google sends out surveys to some local businesses to see if they would pay for some features they are currently getting for free from the search engine company. Google My Business is a free service from Google that gives businesses the ability to update their information and in exchange. But Google may decide to start charging a monthly fee to the current free service they offer. However, for the sake of this question, let’s assume that they charge for searches, and then the following things can happen-
BENEFITS
The primary benefit would be that Google could stop spending massive energy on producing search users for advertisers and instead invest all of it into creating the best search experience. Just to touch the surface, imagine the cognitive relief of not having to scan through sponsored results. Who knows what Google might come up with without the restraint of advertising? Maybe they could blow their other free competitors out of the water. And, depending on how much they charge, they could succeed through serving many fewer users.
- Google will be better- The company will have to market its product to a maximum level. For every $1 they have to spend on Marketing, they could easily get a returning $1.5. So, it will be better.
Use of Good memory– For a good while, we will start memorizing every URL we use. There are bookmarks but how many of us use them? We will start saving more and more information on our computers for fear of not being able to access them later.
DRAWBACKS
- Revenue Loss
Google would continue to make money out of ads and app downloads but that would go down considerably as competitors will employ necessary filters to lay the tombstone. People who make money out of Ads in Blogs and YouTube will be jobless overnight as nobody would use them anymore.
- RIP Google
Shares of Google and allied companies will take a drastic fall which will affect the World Stock market in a cascading effect that will be quite drastic. The company would literally die and not the kind where you can reincarnate/resurrect. Google’s then CEO would be fired soon enough.
- Academic Troubles
Several schools and college students would feel helpless as they cannot find answers for many questions they want. There would be a considerable decrease in scores of school kids exposed to computers and a full-blown drop in college results. Few people would want to seem cool and subscribe immediately to the paid Google service only to later realize that they were silly.
CONCLUSION
Google is popular just because it is free. Google may not charge fees in the future. There is no cost involved in listing your business so it can appear in Google search results. Having said that, it will need to put in some work to ensure that people’s listing does appear in search results. Google’s main revenue stream is Adwords, which relies on Google’s high market share in the search engine market.
