Google One
Ranked 7 of 14 cloud storage by recommenders
People recommend it for cheap cloud storage bundled with Gemini and family sharing, but critics say billing and support are hard to get right.
People recommend it for cheap cloud storage bundled with Gemini and family sharing, but critics say billing and support are hard to get right.
49 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 23
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap storage compared with alternatives
“Google has pretty competitive storage AND they are fully abusing Android integration for AND they have pretty good bundling of that storage”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Anthropic raises $30B in Series G funding at $380B post-money valuation” “400GB of cloud storage for $5/mo is actually quite amazing even if it didn’t include anything else.”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Gemini 3.7 Flash” “Which is like... $2 for 100GB and you can cancel immediately after”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail” - Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030”
- Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Claude Opus 4.5”
Bundles Gemini and other perks
“Google One plans are quite a good value actually - for a few bucks you get more Gemini plus space in Drive and other extras.”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber” “I pay for bundled Google storage + Gemini and YouTube separately, it's still worth it, even without free months or whatever.”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Sad Story of My Google Workspace Account Suspension” “students get a couple free years of a Google One subscription which comes with access to the nicer models”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch” - Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Google Got Its Groove Back and Edged Ahead of OpenAI”
Easy to sign up for
“Gemini CLI via a Google One plan is the regular consumer billing flow which is pretty straightforward.”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed” “Quickest way I know to get on any plan is via Google One”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Gemini 4 Argon” “It's vanishingly easy with the app”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Gemini 4 Argon” - Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber”
Family plan shared across accounts
“Google lets one subscription be used by *SIX* different google accounts on a family plan.”
Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “Ember-1” “It's actually cheaper if you subscribe as family on Google One.”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Oracle is underwater on its $300B OpenAI deal”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Billing and subscription problems
“Google One plan bundles YT Premium Lite as an extra. So they actively blocked me from getting Premium back for a month.”
Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive” “They're still charging her for Google One and she can't even manage the subscription because she can't log in.”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Google Antigravity TOS: 3rd party usage can get Google account suspended” “that somehow made it impossible to renew YT Premium for 30 days”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber” Poor customer support
“They're still charging her for Google One and she can't even manage the subscription because she can't log in.”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Google Antigravity TOS: 3rd party usage can get Google account suspended” “I have Google One, and pay $250/mo for Ultra, which I barely use, yet I literally have no support.”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned” Nags users with upgrade prompts
“start nagging aggressively at 90% full”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?” “every google app prompts and notifies and nags about it on every launch”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?” “Google WILL make sure you're feeling the withdrawal symptoms fast.”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “How do I permanently disable Google Photos pop-up prompt to backup my photos?” Forced bundles and unwanted extras
“I can't even share my Google One storage without subscribing to a Google AI plan anymore”
Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “Ember-1” “the pricing includes a bunch of other Google crap I have zero interest in”
Comment from 3 Jul 2026 in “Gemini Code Assist will be shut down on July 17” “Then they started actually limiting it to 5TB and it wasn't worth it.”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage”
Other cloud storage people recommend
The four most recommended other cloud storage, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple iCloud | 144 | 231 | 38% | 13 | 3 yrs7 owners | — |
| Dropbox | 140 | 166 | 46% | 12 | 12 yrs16 owners | — |
| OneDrive | 86 | 370 | 19% | 12 | 8 yrs6 owners | — |
| Google Drive | 66 | 130 | 34% | 12 | 5 yrs3 owners | — |
| Google OneThis page | 26 | 23 | 53% | 11 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 52 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it gave me Pro level, IIRC, and it was generous”
“It's vanishingly easy with the app”
“I use the hell out of both”
“I pay Google a reasonable price for 5TB storage/backup across GMail/Docs/etc.”
“Quickest way I know to get on any plan is via Google One”
“Google lets one subscription be used by *SIX* different google accounts on a family plan.”
“I can't even share my Google One storage without subscribing to a Google AI plan anymore”
“Google One subscriptions, which are mostly irrelevant if you use GrapheneOS”
“start nagging aggressively at 90% full”
“every google app prompts and notifies and nags about it on every launch”
“They're still charging her for Google One and she can't even manage the subscription because she can't log in.”
“Then they started actually limiting it to 5TB and it wasn't worth it.”
“Subscription? -> Google One plan”
“a google pro subscription is still cheaper for me than the time value of setting up and maintainence”
“Google One plans are quite a good value actually - for a few bucks you get more Gemini plus space in Drive and other extras.”
“I don't really need to sweat it because I can back up most things on this phone and ignore Google photos backup alerts”
“Google One plan bundles YT Premium Lite as an extra. So they actively blocked me from getting Premium back for a month.”
“Google WILL make sure you're feeling the withdrawal symptoms fast.”
“I'm definetely not going to pay 10EUR/month for Google One's 2TB.”
“400GB of cloud storage for $5/mo is actually quite amazing even if it didn’t include anything else.”
“Google also gave away 1 year Gemini plans with Pixel phones that either did not work at all for existing Google One users”
“that somehow made it impossible to renew YT Premium for 30 days”
“I was able to find a way to downgrade my Google One back to the $2/m for extra storage”
“the pricing includes a bunch of other Google crap I have zero interest in”
“Which is like... $2 for 100GB and you can cancel immediately after”
“Which I'm ineligible for because I'm on a workspace account”
“I already did not know what was included in my google one account”
“students get a couple free years of a Google One subscription which comes with access to the nicer models”
“I pay for bundled Google storage + Gemini and YouTube separately, it's still worth it, even without free months or whatever.”
“Google (or the provider?) discontinued that specific Google One plan”
“I have Google One, and pay $250/mo for Ultra, which I barely use, yet I literally have no support.”
“these days both apple and google offer decent cloud backup solutions”
“Google gives me a stupid large number of tokens that refresh every 6-24 hours”
“Google has pretty competitive storage AND they are fully abusing Android integration for AND they have pretty good bundling of that storage”
“upgrading the plan costs less than paying $20/mo to OpenAI”
“I like having the extra storage with my Google One plan bundle”
“Gemini CLI via a Google One plan is the regular consumer billing flow which is pretty straightforward.”
“Google gives you double that for the same price ($99/yr)”
“which gives me the most value with the 2tb google drive”
“It's actually cheaper if you subscribe as family on Google One.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.