Google has extended a free year of Google AI Plus (or Pro if you’re an American student) to qualifying students worldwide. The stated reason for this is “so students can make the most of this school year,” but Google isn’t really doing this out of the goodness of its corporate heart.
The adage of ‘get them while they’re young’ applies to everything from the smoking industry to religion to social media. Scooping up new AI users can only help the internet giant’s figures, even if they’re not paying for their subscriptions. Eventually, they will. At least, that’s the hope.
AI Plus strings attached
It’s not like Google is offering students nothing with its AI Plus offer, though. AI Plus usually costs R105/m for South Africans. Students who can prove they’re students get twelve months’ access free of charge.
Included in the package are 400GB of cloud data storage, access to Gemini Omni, and a doubling of Gemini’s rate limits. The company reckons students will find numerous tools to assist their education journey within the subscription. A student hub helps with notes, organisation, study prep, and mock tests. Study notebooks, a relatively new feature, acts as an AI teacher and assessor. That’s apparently due for upgrades soon, as well.
Then there are interactive visualisations that are supposed to hammer concepts into your head. Finally, Gemini Live has just gained Deep Research access. That’ll let students analyse and create “comprehensive, multi-step research reports and chat with Gemini” via web or mobile interfaces in “a natural, conversational way.”
There are probably still some hurdles to overcome for South African students. To qualify, they’ll need to verify their student IDs through SheerID. A payment method is also needed, though it’ll only begin deductions once a year has passed. Time is limited, though. The offer is only available for sign-up until 31 December, 2026. Quite clever, really. Imagine losing access to your study buddy just before the big year-end push. It might just convince you that Google AI Plus is worth paying for.
