In a bit of irony, Google is launching a VPN service to protect users’ privacy.
The VPN will be a free perk to the $9.99-a-month 2TB plan on Google One, the company’s cloud storage service. Soon, the Google One app for Android will display a new function that can activate a VPN over the user's smartphone.
The company is offering the VPN as a safeguard to prevent hackers from snooping on users’ unencrypted web traffic if their phone is ever connected to a public Wi-Fi network. A VPN can stop the potential eavesdropping by encrypting the phone's internet connection, thereby scrambling the data flowing to and from the device.
“We already build advanced security into all our products, and the VPN extends that security to encrypt all of your phone’s online traffic, no matter what app or browser you’re using,” the company wrote in today’s announcement. "The VPN is built into the Google One app, so with just one tap, you can rest assured knowing your connection is safe from hackers.”
Still, Google’s decision to offer a VPN will definitely raise some eyebrows. After all, the company’s whole business model is about tracking your internet activities in order to serve up relevant ads.
VPNs also work by ferrying the user’s internet connection to a private server, enabling the VPN provider (in this case, Google) to theoretically view all the web traffic flowing through the machine. However, Google is promising its customers the company can run a trusted VPN service.
“With VPN by Google One, we will never use the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your online activity,” the company wrote in a paper about the technology. “Some minimum logging is performed to ensure quality of service, but your network traffic or IP associated with the VPN is never logged.”
“To demonstrate how our design works, we have open sourced the code that runs on a user’s device and in the coming months we will be open sourcing the server side user authentication mechanism as well as providing the results of a third party audit, currently underway,” the company added.
The paper goes on to detail Google’s approach to the VPN technology, saying it’ll offer speeds above 300 Mbps. The document also says the company wants to make “VPN technology available to as many users as possible,” a signal that Google has long-term ambitions in the VPN market, which is already rife with competition.
The company plans to first roll out the VPN service in the coming weeks in the US market. It’ll first only be available for the Google One Android App. But over the ensuing months, Google plans on expanding the VPN service on Google One to more platforms including iOS, Windows and Mac.
Google One is also available at cheaper, monthly storage plans. But for now the VPN feature will only available on the 2TB and higher storage plans.