Since 2018, the Gods of Google have offered subscriptions to their “One” service. For as little as $1.99 per month in select countries, users can benefit from extra perks, including increased storage and access to Google One VPN.
If you’re signed up with Google One, it may be tempting just to use their VPN service but compared to a reliable VPN provider like hide.me VPN, it’s not nearly as efficient or safe. In this guide, you’ll learn how Google One VPN stacks up.
Server Selection
As every good VPN user knows, when a device uses the service, it establishes a secure connection to the VPN server. Most VPN services, like ours, operate servers in several locations. This allows users to connect via a server in a different country to access geo-restricted platforms like Netflix.
Despite the low price tag, one of the biggest downsides to Google One VPN is that users aren’t offered a choice of VPN server. The service seems to connect to a VPN server in their home country, which they can’t change. This means users are at a significant disadvantage compared to regular VPN services.
Limited Protocols
When first launched, Google One’s VPN used its own proprietary protocol. However, they have promised to switch to IPSec and even allow third parties to audit their open-source code. This has yet to fully materialize.
On the other hand, privacy-focused VPN services like hide.me VPN offer a range of VPN protocols, including IKEv2, OpenVPN, and Wireguard. As these protocols are open source, they can be evaluated by experts in the coding community to ensure their safety.
Different protocols are also helpful for different scenarios, so offering a variety empowers users to make informed choices.
No obfuscation
Obfuscated or “stealth” protocols are designed to conceal traffic, so it’s not obvious that you’re using a VPN. This can be very useful if your ISP or network tries to block VPN usage.
Google One, however, does not attempt to disguise your traffic, making it much easier to detect and block.
At hide.me VPN, our implementation of the OpenVPN protocol uses TLS-crypt. This encrypts your data, making it extremely difficult to distinguish it from ordinary TLS traffic.
Google Account requirement
Using Google One VPN requires a Google One subscription, which in turn requires a Google Account. This means it’s extremely simple to link your identity to your VPN usage.
Reliable VPN services like hide.me VPN allow you to register using a mail provider who values privacy, like Tuta, or even via a disposable email address.
We also are happy to accept payment via anonymous methods like Bitcoin. This makes it much harder to link your VPN usage to your real-world identity.
Unclear Logging Policies
Good VPN services have a clearly stated privacy and “no log” policy. This is a commitment not to store any personally identifiable information about you on the VPN servers, so even if they are compromised or seized, there’s no record of your web activity.
The very best VPN providers, like hide.me VPN, also publish regular transparency reports of data requests and submit them to security audits to confirm that the “no log” policy is operating as advertised.
Google submitted its VPN service to a security audit ℅ NCC group in mid-2022. No significant security risks were found, but researchers discovered that Google could easily violate its privacy policy if it chose to do so or was forced to do so by law.
If this seems unlikely, remember that Google has faced repeated legal action for breaches in data privacy, such as a $350 million settlement paid in early 2024 for inadvertent data leaks. In late 2023, the company also settled a lawsuit over tracking users even when using Chrome’s ‘incognito’ mode.
Limited Extra Features
Google One VPN is available across various platforms, but not all features are supported. For instance, split tunnelling works on a ‘blacklist’ basis whereby users have to specify every device they do not want to connect to the VPN service.
This is in contrast to VPN clients like ours, which also allow you to ‘whitelist’ only specific apps, such as your web browser, to use the VPN.
Mobile versions of Google One’s VPN app contain a “kill switch” to block internet activity when not connected to the VPN service. Still, this critical security feature is missing from the desktop client.
Reputable VPN providers like hide.me VPN not only provide a kill switch across all app versions but are truly cross-platform: we even have a Linux client.
No free tier/trial
True, free VPNs aren’t as good as paid ones. Running a VPN service is expensive, and so-called “free” providers sometimes pay the bills by selling user data.
Still, many legitimate VPN services like hide.me VPN offer a limited, free tier to allow users to try out the service, install the software and decide if it’s right for them.
A good VPN provider like ours will also offer a money-back guarantee to subscribers who try the service and then decide it’s not right for them.
One of the main downsides of Google One’s VPN service is that it’s only available via subscription, and trials don’t come with a refund guarantee.
Is Google One worth it?
Google One’s VPN service has cleared a security audit, and it seems to operate as they’ve outlined. To its credit, the VPN allows logging in to one server while managing your traffic via another.
The downsides include the fact that you can’t switch between servers, and there aren’t all the privacy-minded features you’d expect to see in a VPN service. While we’re talking privacy, Google also doesn’t have the best track record of keeping customers’ data safe, which makes it a dubious choice for operating secure VPN services.
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Here at hide.me we are all about internet freedom, and we are happy to be in a position to bring that to everyone. That is why we give you a 30-day money-back guarantee on our Premium plan. No questions asked and no logs recorded.
If you have any questions, please feel to contact our 24/7 support team either at support@hide.me or via live chat.
