Effectively, I’m stuck with Google One until I can find a way out of my email mess. In that sense, I have given up on it – my subscription is on borrowed time, since all the other reasons to pay have become irrelevant.
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1Google Drive has plenty of competition
Why keep all your eggs in one basket?
To Google’s credit, Drive is still a great cloud storage option for many people, especially if you have an Android phone or a Chromebook. For free users, it’s certainly better than Dropbox, which continues to limit you to 2GB before you upgrade – even though Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’sOneDrivehave long offered people at least 5GB.
The issue is that if you’re not using Android or ChromeOS every day, you may be better off spending money on storage that’s more closely tied to your daily drivers. If you’re a Mac or iPhone user, for example, paying foriCloud+will expand storage that’s more deeply integrated into macOS and iOS. Both iCloud+ and OneDrive can be lifesavers if your computer goes down, salvaging your desktop and essential files. In better times, they can make migrating to a new computer a lot simpler. Given these things, Google One isn’t going to get any more of my money than I need to maintain Gmail.
Google Drive
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2Gemini and other AI features aren’t a selling point
Google seems to think that Magic Editor andGemini Advancedare so good that they should be reserved for the most expensive Google One plans. You can’t get unlimited Magic Editor saves in Google Photos without paying $10 per month for the 2TB plan, and you have to spend an additional $10 to get Gemini Advanced.
I rarely use AI photo editing in any app, even Photoshop, and I don’t find AI chatbots very helpful. I can write well enough without Gemini, though I might use something like it for a general research outline. But, that’s all – there’s not much point when allchatbots"hallucinate" enough to make their facts unreliable. I have even less use for Gemini’s image generation tech.
Since AI is Google’s main selling point for higher One tiers apart from storage, there’s just no long-term incentive for me to stick with the service. Speaking of which…
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3Google Store discounts are meaningless to most people
You’d better really like Pixel phones and Nest Thermostats
Those discounts would mean something if there was more worth spending money on. The only genuinely popular items in the Google Store are Pixel phones, Pixel Buds, and Pixel Watches – the Pixel Tablet hasn’t taken off, and Google seems to have actively sabotaged its Nest smart home business. Last year’s fourth-genNest Thermostatwas the first major Nest update since 2021, and for some users, Google Home automations are breaking in the transition from Google Assistant to Gemini. It may still be worth investing in a Google Nest setup, but it’s probably safer to wait until everything is fully Gemini-compatible.
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4Offline backup is increasingly cheap
Just be careful about how far your dependence goes
One of the smarter decisions I made with my current PC setup is budgeting for an external SSD. I mostly use it to keep copies of important files, such as invoices, videos, and government documents. The idea is that if I lose internet access, or my laptop dies suddenly, I can plug that drive in wherever I need to and still keep humming. As a bonus, files transfer a heck of a lot faster over USB-C than they do with a cloud connection.
SSDs have become cheap enough that you can buy a 2TB model for under $120, and that storage should last for many years as long as the drive has a durable enclosure. Conversely, Google expects you to pay $120 per year, every year for the same capacity. That ceiling could rise eventually, but don’t count on it.
You shouldn’t depend entirely on offline storage, naturally. A fire, flood, storm, or robbery could wipe things out, so the optimal solution is probably to use a large-scale local backup in tandem with keeping copies of your most important files in the cloud, paying for the minimum amount of cloud storage you can get away with.
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