The wait for the Google VPN has been long but, finally and fortunately, looks like it’s about to end. And it is that, as we can read in The Verge, Google’s “anonymous” browsing service is finally going to reach laptops and desktop systems based on Windows and macOS, thus confirming that the plans communicated by the company already quite some time, since the service was initially launched at the end of 2020, they are about to be completed.
Let us remember that the search engine company offers its virtual private network service at no additional cost to all users.Users of the premium levels of Google One. In case you don’t know the difference between one and the other, you should know that the 200 gigabyte plan (the lower ones are no longer available for new hires) is the only one that does not have this label and, therefore, does not include the use of the Google VPN. The rest, from two terabytes onwards, do include this service.
Initially released only on Android, earlier this year it finally arrived on iOS, good news for Apple device users who, however, learned (we learned) a few months later of the problems of the Apple operating system with this type of connections. However, that launch made us think that Google’s VPN jump to desktop systems could not take too long. Finally I have followed a few months more than you might think, but at least it has been within the same year.
As we told you at the time, Google’s VPN has one point very much in its favor and another quite against it. On the negative side, we find that, unlike other virtual private network services, this does not allow us to use it to access content from streaming platforms in other countries. And it is that you surely already know that the catalogs of these services change from country to country, so if you simulate a connection from, for example, the United States, you can access the service catalog in that region.
The good news is that just like we can share the storage that we have contracted with the members of our family group, we’ll also be able to share Google’s VPN with them, so an entire family unit can protect their Internet browsing activity with a single premium subscription. Let us remember that the price of the same, in its annual mode, starts at 99 euros for the two terabyte plan.
Offering added value to online storage plans is one of the main fronts of technology companies in this market that intends to reach home users on a massive scale (the implementation of these services in the corporate environment is quite different). Apple already offers its Apple Relay service in iCloud+ and Apple One plans, although with exactly the same limitation I have stated above about the Google VPN.
Thus, now the ball is, more and more, in the court of private VPN service providers. For now, they play with the trick of allowing the selection of the country from which to establish the outgoing connection, but in time that may no longer be enough to compete with the proposal of Google, Apple and the rest of the technology companies that join in offering VPN access to your clients.
