This seems like a step towards some sort of basic ad supported model. At the end of the day that's the only way they'll be able to survive long term against the money printing machine that is Google. Do I love the idea? No. But it's hard to argue anyone loses when the search space becomes more competitive.
Open AI cannot really succeed unless they build their own hardware. Google has spent a decade developing their own TPUs. You need both lower cost hardware and superior software/algorithms to make a good solution.
