If you’re an iPhone owner and you subscribe to Google One Premium — which is the most premium tier of Google’s subscription plan that costs $10/month and gets you 2TB of cloud-based storage across Gmail, Google Photos and Google Drive — you now have access to a new feature: Google’s VPN service called VPN by Google One. And it comes at no extra cost.
The main advantage of a VPN is that it lets you browse, stream and download content on the web in more secure and private way; this way, you’re better protected on public Wi-Fi and cellular connections, as well as preventing websites being about to access your search history or location (so you shouldn’t be targeted as much by advertisements). The feature was already available to Android users who subscribe to Google One Premium, but it has only just rolled out to iPhones this week. Another nice perk is that you can share the VPN service with your family members (up to five of them). At no additional cost.
You might reasonably say “Oh, Google is ensuring my privacy? As if.” But as Google will have you know, its system has been independently audited. Of course, Google has plenty of ways to track your data even if you are using a VPN that does in fact hide your traffic from sources like your internet service provider or the websites you are using: namely, your Google account and/or your Chrome browser activity. So keep that in mind.
Google’s subscription services have become more prominent in recent years, with the main catalyst coming in June 2021 when the company ended its unlimited free storage for Google Photos; at that time, it encouraged people to sign up to Google One.
Right now, Google offers 15 GB of cloud-based storage for free. The most entry-level Google One plan costing $2/month and gets you 100GB of storage. However, if you want the new VPN feature you have to be a Premium subscriber, which costs at least $10 and gets you 1TB of storage. There are even higher-storage tiers to Google One Premium, all of which also now come with the new VPN feature. (You can check out the different plans and pricing, here.)
The new VPN feature works in a total of 18 different countries, including the US, Canada, Mexico and the UK.