Google is democratizing its VPN offer. Launched in November 2020, the tool linked to the Google One subscription is finally available on Windows and macOS. Until then, it was only present on mobile (iOS, Android) for holders of a €9.99/month subscription.
Still so limited
This last condition has not changed; it is still necessary to subscribe to the Google One offer at 2 TB / month (which includes sharing storage space with five people and priority support) in order to take advantage of Google VPN. Now you can also use it on your desktop or laptop. Be careful, the Google tool comes with quite significant limitations.
The Google One VPN (available in France since August 2021) does not allow websites to be misled as to geographical location. As the company writes on its site, “Google One VPN assigns you an IP address corresponding to the country you are in“. It is therefore impossible to consult the American Netflix catalog from France. According to Google, this limitation is thought “so that websites can offer you content adapted to your region”.
Rather than highlighting this common practice, but dubious from a legal point of view, Google is content to position its VPN as a good means of “encrypt your online activity for extra protection no matter where you connect from”. Well aware that the general public does not instinctively associate Google with the protection of privacy, the company has tried to reassure its users about the operation of its VPN service.
A trusted VPN?
On the page detailing the technical characteristics of the service, Google explains that the connection timestamp, the bandwidth used, the IP address of the devices and the network traffic “are not registered by the VPN”. No session ID, which allows the service provider to identify the user and his activity, is linked to the operation of the VPN. The identification is carried out according to the cryptographic principle of blind signature. Finally, the source code of the applications is also available and the VPN has been audited by an independent company.
On paper, Google VPN doesn’t seem much more chatty than any other similar service. That said, given its very limited functionality and the minimal trust that the general public may have in the company’s privacy protection policy, the Google One offer does not seem more competitive than others, such as ProtonVPN, Surfshark or NordVPN. Google’s VPN is more of a nice bonus than a real loss leader.