After a successful trial period, Google has announced its in-house VPN service is now rolling out to a wider range of countries, beyond just the US.
Bundled with Google One cloud storage subscriptions (2TB or larger), the VPN service will soon be available in seven new countries: Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Once rollout is complete, customers based in these countries will be able to enable the service via the Google One app for Android. Google also intends to bring the service to iOS, macOS and Windows soon enough, but specific timings remain unclear.
Google One VPN
The most affordable way to access Google’s VPN service is via the 2TB Google One subscription, which costs $9.99/£7.99 per month.
For comparison, ExpressVPN subscriptions start at $8.32 per month, with the obvious caveat that they come with none of the additional benefits of Google One (cloud storage, account sharing, discount in Google Store etc.).
Admittedly, Google’s predominantly security-focused service will not immediately threaten the giants of the consumer VPN space, which allow users to throw their IP address to hundreds of locations worldwide and are built for maximum performance.
However, as we wrote when Google’s VPN was first announced, the entrance of Google into the market could push the likes of Apple (with Apple One), Amazon (with Prime) and Microsoft (with Microsoft 365) to follow suit with bundles of their own. After all, the cost of spinning up a VPN service would be comparatively low for these companies, who already own hundreds of thousands of server racks worldwide.
In the near future, it’s not difficult to imagine the consolidation of the kinds of services web users rely on every day: a single package that offers VPN, cloud storage, antivirus, productivity tools, a password manager and more.
