iPhones can now use Google's One VPN — but should you?

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Users of iPhones and iPads tin at present use Google's virtual-private-network (VPN) service, Google said in a weblog posting today (Feb. 1). Only the existent question is: Will iPhone users want to?

Google's VPN, officially named "VPN by Google One," comes bundled with the higher price tiers of Google's One online-storage service for consumers. To get the VPN, you accept to pay $10 per calendar month or $100 per year for Google I's Premium plan, which gets you 2 terabytes of online storage infinite.

The service is bachelor to customers in the U.Due south., Canada and Mexico; the U.Yard. and Ireland; the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Republic of iceland, Kingdom of norway and Sweden); and nearly of western Europe (Republic of austria, Belgium, French republic, Frg, Italy, kingdom of the netherlands, Spain and Switzerland) except Portugal, Luxembourg and the European microstates. Google promises that the VPN will "aggrandize to more than countries over time."

Is Google 1 VPN worth the money?

Even so, unless you really demand that online storage space, you tin can get service from some of the best VPN providers for far less than $100 year. Windscribe costs $49 per year, Mullvad costs lx euros (well-nigh $67) per year, and NordVPN and Surfshark have introductory yearly deals of $59 and $78, respectively, although their prices go up after that.

Google'due south blog posting says that Google Ane Premium "members can share their plan and the VPN with up to five family members at no actress toll, so they can all utilize the VPN, no matter whether they're using an Android or iOS telephone." All the other VPN services named above let y'all practice that too.

There are other perks for Google One Premium subscribers, simply they might not be so appealing to any iPhone users who are deeply embedded in Apple tree's walled garden, even if they have a Gmail accost.

You'll get a discount of 10% on Google Store purchases, "access to Google experts" for tech back up, and vaguely defined "extra member benefits." (Super-Premium plans can pay even more for five, 10, 20 or 30 TB of storage space.)

We subscribe to the much cheaper Google Ane Basic plan and our benefits are "extra Google Photos editing features," three free months of Stadia Pro and three costless months of YouTube Premium. Hopefully the benefits are more than exciting for Google I Premium subscribers.

Overall, Google's VPN for iOS users might work for people who have a foot in both worlds, so equally those utilise an iPhone but a Chromebook besides.

What Google One VPN offers and doesn't offer

Equally for Google's VPN itself, it seems to exist a solid selection every bit far as features and reliability are concerned, with a kill switch (which Google calls "Safe Disconnect") and split tunneling so that only some apps use the VPN ("App Bypass").

Google One'southward explainer document says the VPN, at to the lowest degree on Android, initially used a proprietary protocol only was in the procedure of switching to IPSec; an independent audit washed by NCC Grouping in 2021 indicates that the protocol used is indeed IPSec. Source code for the Android Google One VPN service is available on GitHub.

All the same, our own assessment of Google One VPN points out that the service doesn't offer the main matter people really want to use VPNs for: the ability to access streaming content from other countries. Yous tin can't cull which Google 1 VPN server you connect to, and information technology'due south unlikely that Google would desire to run afoul of Netflix and open itself upwards to lawsuits.

Google hasn't notwithstanding told the states how the VPN will work on iOS, but we tin can assume information technology will involve the Google One app, which has been in the App Store since belatedly 2020. On Android, y'all open up the Google 1 app and tap on "Benefits," then "View Details" and finally "Enable VPN."

That process is a bit clunky, only y'all tin likewise add a VPN toggle switch to your Android phone's Quick Settings. We hope the iOS process will be smoother.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom'south Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He'due south been rooting around in the information-security space for more than fifteen years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random TV news spots and even chastened a console discussion at the CEDIA home-technology briefing. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-one-vpn-ios

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iPhones can now use Google's One VPN — but should you?