Google One VPN Review (2024): Features, Pros And Cons (2024)

• Google One VPN is a VPN app launched as part of Google’s Google One subscription service
• On top of the VPN, a Google One subscription includes extra features for Google apps, such as Photos and data storage
• The VPN itself is largely bereft of the features we expect from even a mediocre VPN, such as the ability to select where your IP address is coming from.

Quick Specs

As a VPN service, removed from the context of the rest of the Google One subscription, Google One VPN is set apart by what it lacks more than what it contains. The inability to choose where your IP address is coming from is a glaring hole in the overall product. The absence of split tunneling and a kill switch on non-Android operating systems is similarly noticeable. We consider these features to be a basic part of any quality VPN service.

Apart from missing essential features, however, Google One VPN doesn’t do anything unique or particularly interesting. There’s not a whole lot of VPN there. The nicest thing we can say about it is that it turns on.

Pros

The main things Google One VPN has going for it are that it’s relatively cheap at a base price of $1.99 per month and that it comes as part of the larger Google One package. Google One includes several features outside the VPN, such as added functionality to the Google Photos app, extra cloud data storage of up to 5TB and dark web monitoring.

Unfortunately, these pros aren’t doing much to outweigh the cons. The price tag is nice but held back by the dearth of basic VPN functionality. The additional features for Google One are appealing, but they don’t incentivize users to use Google One VPN. It would be very easy to use the data storage or the extra Google Photos features and never even touch the VPN, and if you do have a Google One subscription, that is what we recommend. A dedicated VPN, such as Mullvad, Proton VPN or hide.me, will be a much better option every single time.

Cons

There’s plenty not to like about Google One VPN, unfortunately. We’ve already harped enough on the absence of critical features, but another issue is that it’s owned by Google. When you use a VPN, you are effectively saying, “I trust this VPN provider to handle my data and Internet traffic better than my ISP.” This is an area where Google fails for us. We’ll go into more detail below (see our section on security and privacy), but the short version is that Google’s long history with mishandling and monetizing user data makes it extremely hard for us to trust the company with our Internet traffic under any circumstances. Thanks to the VPN product they put out being so disappointing, it’s even easier to make that call than it would be otherwise.

Google One VPN is, by itself, not a complete product and is merely part of the larger Google One package. This package can include benefits, such as additional cloud storage up to 5TB, enhanced features for other Google apps, such as Google Photos and store credit reimbursement on Google Store purchases. These plans start at $1.99 per month for one month, which is much more cost-effective than most VPNs we’ve covered. However, it’s not a complete VPN, as it lacks features we expect. As it is, even many free VPNs offer more features. If you’re already looking at a Google One plan for its other features, however, the lowest-cost plan is extremely cheap.

Instead of our usual VPN testing, which looks at each protocol a VPN supports, we decided to test the one setting available to us that could have an effect on device speeds: Expanded Region. Expanded Region is the closest you can get to picking your location with Google One VPN, as it widens the list of possible locations your IP address could be coming out of.

Methodology: Our VPN speed comparison is tested on a Windows 11 machine using Cloudflare’s public speed test. Each protocol was connected to the nearest possible server and tested multiple times before we came up with these averages.

Overall, Google One VPN’s speeds were fine. They performed about how we’d expect a VPN running WireGuard would, though Google One VPN’s protocol is proprietary. The Expanded Region setting caused a slowdown but nothing we wouldn’t expect from widening a VPN’s connection range. Speed is probably the area where Google One VPN most resembles a real VPN, functioning as expected with minimal lag noticed when browsing the Internet.

Google One VPN has some basic security/privacy measures we expect from a VPN, namely a no-logs policy and multifactor authentication (MFA). However, the company’s reputation does it no favors in the trust department. As news coverage has shown, the company has had many indiscretions with user privacy, such as the $392 million settlement with 40 U.S. states over user location tracking or the myriad ways it monetizes user data.

Its independent security audit in 2021 and the follow-up in 2022, conducted by cybersecurity consultants NCC Group Security Services, revealed some concerns about the product as well. Namely, the potential exists for the company to effectively track VPN users through various means, including associating a particular VPN tunnel with a Google identity, effectively deanonymizing user traffic through a VPN. This isn’t a concern unique to Google, of course, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. There are ways to add protections for these sorts of vulnerabilities, but, according to the 2021 report, Google considered the risk to be within acceptable parameters.

Google One VPN’s customer support options function from Google’s preexisting support structure. In other words, it’s a knowledge base that functions fine, but we found it wasn’t as in-depth as the knowledge base for a dedicated VPN. We only found one or two pages relevant to the VPN at all, including a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page on the product that we were directed to frequently when trying to use the knowledge base.

The FAQs page was informative in some ways but didn’t fully answer our questions. Thankfully, Google One subscribers do get access to real human customer support via email. We reached out to this customer support three times during the course of our testing but did not receive any reply. We never expect same-day replies when contacting customer support through email, but we waited for about a week with no reply.

Google One VPN vs. Proton VPN, Mullvad VPN and ExpressVPN

Normally, we would compare Google One VPN with each provider individually, but our verdict for all three is the same. Unless you are already using Google One on Android or want some of the non-VPN features, there is no real reason to use Google One VPN over any dedicated VPN product.

Two of the most base-level features of a modern VPN, split tunneling and an internet kill switch, only working on Android is bad enough for Google One VPN, but you can’t even select which region your connection is coming from, which might be the most basic feature any consumer VPN should have.

Despite Google One VPN’s low price point, it lacks features that even free VPNs typically include, such as the ability to pick your location from a limited selection.

On top of that, you’d be trusting your Internet traffic to Google, the company arguably most synonymous with the predatory user data collection and monetization practices that have led so many people to flock to VPNs to begin with. Whatever flaws Proton VPN, Mullvad VPN and ExpressVPN have, they are at least fully functional VPNs and aren’t associated with one of the pillars of modern Internet privacy violation.

We cannot think of a single type of user Google One VPN would benefit, aside from users who already have a Google One subscription. Even then, if you’re actively looking for a VPN, we would recommend nearly any other VPN we have covered over Google One VPN. For individual users, it can’t do any of the things one might expect from a VPN, and it cannot be used for business purposes.

Google One VPN For Personal Use

Google One VPN is not recommended for personal use. Unless you’re using Google One for its non-VPN features, there’s no reason to purchase this plan as an individual user. You can’t unblock streaming services with it, you would be trusting your data privacy to Google and you wouldn’t even be getting a feature-complete VPN for your troubles. The VPN market is full of good-to-great options for personal use, but Google One VPN is not one of them.

Google One VPN For Business Use

Google One VPN is not recommended at all for business use, and you can’t purchase a Google One subscription from a Google Workspaces account. Not even being able to select where your VPN is coming from, coupled with its drought of features and reported connectivity issues make it unideal for business users, who might need a more consistent, feature-rich VPN to meet their needs.