Google One is a subscription plan for a bundle of services, primarily cloud storage in Google Drive for use with Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Photos. The package is generous, adding nifty photo effects, support by phone or chat, and discounts on Google products. While Google has announced that it will be discontinuing the VPN part of Google One on June 10, 2024, it has added a plan that includes preferred access to the company's Gemini AI tool. Our Editors' Choice winners for online storage services are IDrive for its generous pricing and backup capabilities and Microsoft OneDrive for its inclusion of top office productivity applications and integration with Windows. Though you can find better pricing for online storage, Google One is an appealing package if you use Google's services.
How Much Does Google One Cost?
You can start out with Google One's Basic plan for just $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. That gets you 100GB of online storage, shared among your Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail services. You also get some handy photo tools in the Google Photos mobile app and support via phone and text chat from Google staff. Anyone can get 15GB of storage free with any Google account, but that doesn’t get you these Google One extras.
For a buck more per month, the $2.99-a-month (or $29.99 per year) Standard plan bumps up the storage to 200GB and gives you a 3% discount in the Google Store on Pixel phones, Nest smart home devices, and other products. The $9.99-per-month (or $99.99 per year) Premium plan brings 2TB of storage and increases your discount at the store to 10%. If you want the new Google One AI Premium subscription, you pay $19.99 per month, with no discount for annual payments. This plan includes the same 2TB of storage as the regular Premium plan.
Subscribers also get dark web monitoring, which is different from the free dark web monitoring included with Gmail because Google One watches for more personal information on the dark web than just your email address—more on that in a bit.
Similar Products
Microsoft 365
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Higher price plans go all the way up to $149.99 per month for 30TB of storage, although details of plans offering more than 2TB are only visible to people who subscribe to Google One. All plans can be shared among five family members and friends. Family setups include both private and shared storage, so family members don't see other members' data unless they specifically share it with the group.
For comparison, a $9.99-a-month or $99-per-year Microsoft 365 account gets you 6TB of OneDrive storage—1TB each for six people. You also get installable versions of Microsoft's Office apps, premium templates, family safety features, dark web monitoring, and support by phone and chat. A single-user account is $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, with 1TB of storage. Free users get just 5GB and use of the web versions of Microsoft Office.
Apple One isn't comparable with Google One because it focuses less on cloud storage (50GB with a $16.95-per-month Individual account) and more on entertainment (Apple TV+, Music, and Arcade). Apple One is more expensive, too, and it only works with Apple’s hardware. Apple's Premier plan ($32.95 per month) adds Fitness+ and News+, increases the cloud storage to 2TB, and lets you share the account with five people.
For an Apple subscription without entertainment, iCloud Drive costs 99 cents per month for 50GB; $2.99 per month for 200GB; or $9.99 per month for 2TB (the last two have the same price-per-GB as Google One). At all levels, you get the quasi-VPN service Apple calls Private Relay, but it only works in Safari. You get 5GB free if you own an Apple device; others get a paltry 1GB free.
Amazon Prime ($139 per year) is another online bundled service, that overlaps with Google One in what it offers. It doesn’t get you much cloud storage, however, since Amazon discontinued Amazon Drive—except for photos, for which it gives you unlimited storage. You also get Prime Video and Amazon Music (the excellent Amazon Music Unlimited is a separate $7.99 per month). And of course, you get free delivery for items bought from the online retailer.
If you're only interested in cloud storage and syncing, check out IDrive, which has the best space-to-price value at 5TB for $79.50 per year.
What Do You Get With Google One?
In addition to online cloud storage, Google One gives you an app to manage all of your account services. You also get highly effective photo editing tools in the Google Photos mobile app. More on those below.
Subscribers to the Google One AI Premium plan can use Google's latest 1.0 Ultra AI model which is faster and capable of more complex tasks than the free version of Gemini. They can also use the AI in Gmail, Docs, Slides, and Meet. In that last mentioned service, Google's AI magic can reduce noise and improve the lighting in video meetings. For ideas of what you can do with Google's generative AI, read 14 Ways Gemini Can Make Your Life Easier.
As mentioned above, Standard 200GB subscribers get 3% off in the Google Store and Premium subscribers get a 10% discount. I got a $5 credit to Google Play with a Basic 100GB plan, though it's only mentioned on some pages. Finally, you get chat and phone support with every Google One account level.
Privacy With Google One
Some will no doubt think twice about using Google to store all their personal information, photos, and correspondence; after all, Google is indeed the largest miner of personal data on the planet. Our article How Companies Turn Your Data Into Money notes that in terms of tracking code on websites, Google is "the outright leader, receiving data from 64 percent of page loads. A distant second, but still far ahead of the rest of the competition, was Facebook at 28 percent." But Google's privacy policy clearly states, "We don’t show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos." What it does use is your Google search queries and your YouTube queries and history.
Mobile App
The Google One app lets you back up your mobile device, including contacts, calendar, and photos; on Android, you can also back up apps. The Android backup space is taken out of your Google Drive allowance. The app shows you how much storage you’re using in Google Drive and for what, with suggestions for trimming it down. (For more on that topic, read How to Free Up Space in Google Drive.) For example, the app suggests clearing out space taken up by deleted mail and other large items. You can also add family members with whom you want to share your account storage and features.
Support
Support for Google One subscribers is available 24/7 via phone and chat. You can initiate a session either on the web or in the mobile app. To test the support service, we asked how to get stronger security and requested a call back. The call came a mere 25 seconds after the request; a robot voice answered first, but quickly connected to a live support person just ten seconds after that.
When you request support, you have to specify a product and topic, and can optionally upload a screenshot of your issue. You also enter the phone number where you want to be called; more than a hundred country codes are supported.
The support rep in a test call had a ready answer for concerns about securing a Google account on ChromeOS, and offered help setting up multi-factor authentication. They also explained that there's a physical security key you can purchase. After a support session, you can see a record of your conversation at the bottom of your Support page. The experience overall was quite positive.
Chat support was less successful in testing. When asked about how to secure a Google account on ChromeOS, the rep said it worked the same as the Windows version, but that's impossible since it involves downloading a Windows program. There was no mention of ChromeOS in the support pages the rep directed us to.
What Is Two-Factor Authentication?
Google Photos Benefits With Google One
You can do plenty with the Google Photos mobile app without a Google One account, but you’ll be tempted to pay for the service when you see the effects that have a colorful "1" logo appended to their buttons. These include Dynamic, Vivid, Luminous, Radiant, Ember, Airy, Afterglow, Stormy, Portrait Light, and Blur. iOS tends to follow Android regarding feature additions. Google One subscribers also get an HDR tool. These effects and tools really can improve and enhance your photos.
One of the hottest Google One photo tools is Magic Eraser. It now works on iOS as well as Android, but not in the desktop browser version of Google Photos. This tool works similarly to features in many desktop photo editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop.
Magic Eraser is sort of the opposite of the lift subject feature on newer Apple iPhones. It removes unwanted people and objects from your photos, to clear up a scene or portrait, rather than removing the background. Found in the Tools section of the Google Photos app, you simply draw on the object you want to remove.
Dark Web Monitoring
All Google One plans come with dark web monitoring. This service saves you from having to set up and search Tor's shady marketplaces by yourself. Microsoft 365, as well as several identity theft protection products like Aura and Norton LifeLock, also offer dark web monitoring. The service scans these nefarious regions for info such as your name, address, email, phone number, and Social Security number, which you can choose to enter for monitoring. Microsoft Defender goes way beyond this, also letting you monitor credit cards, passports, driver's licenses, and more.
If Google One finds that your information has been compromised, it notifies you and advises you on the next steps toward mitigation, such as reporting to a government or financial institution. Any free Google user can do a dark web report, but the proactive monitoring requires a Google One account.
The One Package You Need?
Google One offers subscribers some appealing perks, including nifty photo editing tools, priority support, and discounts on Google products. If you use services like Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail, and Docs heavily, subscribing is a no-brainer—it’s a fine deal for the cloud storage alone. You can find cheaper online storage and more powerful photo apps elsewhere, but you have to buy each of them separately. Google One conveniently bundles them up for you, even if no single component is the very best you can find. Nevertheless, our Editors' Choice winner is Microsoft OneDrive for its low price for lots of storage, the inclusion of Office applications, and integration with Windows. For online backup, our top pick is IDrive for its low price and full set of backup features.
A Google One subscription enhances the web giant's cloud storage plans by adding photo editing tools, dark web monitoring, priority support, and AI tools.
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