Google One is by no means the search giant’s most popular or profitable product, but with
over 100 million global subscribers as of just last week, the cloud storage service certainly deserves to make headlines… for good and for bad reasons.
The latest story is likely to enrage some users, at least if it proves to be as bad
as it looks at first glance. If you’re not a paid Google One subscriber yet and want to become one,
its official website currently gives you a choice between 100GB, 2TB, and 2TB AI Premium plans.
That’s all well and good, but while those options may feel like they cater to the needs of most prospective users (alongside the free 15GB tier), there was actually something in the middle there until recently that appears to have gone away.
We’re talking about the 200GB “Standard” plan, which used to cost $2.99 a month in the US compared to the $1.99 and $9.99 fees of the 100 gig “Basic” and 2TB “Premium” options respectively. Curiously enough, existing users who already pay for the Basic plan (as is the case for this writer, for instance) can still see the 200 gig option, at least when they’re logged into their accounts.
That seems to suggest the 200GB plan removal is either being done gradually or only partially. Of course, it would be rather bizarre for
Google to retain this option exclusively for existing subscribers, so if we were to guess which of the two theories is more plausible, we’d definitely go with the former.
There’s also a possibility that this is merely a mistake we’re looking at and no Google One plan will be nixed after all, but that seems highly unlikely.
Given its low monthly cost and relatively generous cloud storage allotment, the 200GB option always felt like a very solid value proposition and we’d certainly feel sorry if Google asked those on this plan to either upgrade or downgrade to a different service tier. For the time being, however, you shouldn’t panic and go there with your speculation (even though we literally just did exactly that), at least until you hear the official word from the company.
