Google to shut down Google One VPN on June 20

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-shut-down-google-one-vpn-on-june-20-here-are-some-alternatives/

by isaacfrond • 2 years ago

123 126 2 years ago

zdnet.com

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40010047

saurik• 2 years ago

And here (both from 2 months ago):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40027182

zuhsetaqi• 2 years ago

Number 293 of killed things by Google: https://killedbygoogle.com/

DANmode• 2 years ago

Is there a Facebook/Meta version of this?

mgiampapa5• 2 years ago

Most of the spaghetti against the wall MVP from meta fails to gain any traction, and if it does it becomes a feature in a main app. Post year of efficiency it might happen again, but every successful Meta app outside of FB was an acquisition of an existing viable product. (Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Occulus) I was really hoping Portal was going to catch on, I really liked it and found it to be a great home VC platform.

SOVIETIC-BOSS88• 2 years ago

Of course there is, although not as crazy as goog's: https://www.killedbymeta.xyz

PunchTornado3• 2 years ago

I was surprised when they announced they're killing workplace. A lot of businesses relied on it.

ignoramous2• 2 years ago

Wait till you find out the kind of intrusive spyware that got CISO at Meta, Guy Rosen, his job.

devsda• 2 years ago

It's not like Google is going to stop here.

So, at this point I think the site owner can go the extra mile and create a bot that keeps track of HN or reddit topics for related headlines and post the running count along with a summary of popular products that Google axed and may be some trivia too.

belter2• 2 years ago

Right now, 60 Apps, 211 Services and 24 Hardware pieces shutdown for a total of 295. It's only Wednesday, so before the weekend can we make it to 296?

"Google Business Messages in Maps and Search shutting down" - https://9to5google.com/2024/05/28/google-business-messages-s...

ravetcofx• 2 years ago

As a business owner thank God. That was an annoying stressful platform I disabled ages ago. Even when enabled it led to little to no leads, but created stress in response time which affected your placement and was featured prominently on the listing.

leokennis• 2 years ago

With this track record, I'm still in awe that there are any serious companies that use GCP. Unless you have a good migration strategy / contingency plan, you're letting your companies' bottom line being held hostage by a fickle and unfocused dog chasing every garbage truck that comes into his field of vision...

Trufa• 2 years ago

This take is completely ridiculous, Google is absolutely not to be trusted in many of this fickle experiments it does and it will hurt them, but putting GCP, a paid system with a track record that powers so many important businesses is just bending the metaphor to a point where it makes no sense.

That said, that's what they get for doing this kind of thing I guess.

tom1337• 2 years ago

google selling their entire domain stuff to squarespace and the elimination of data transfer when you migrate from GCP to another provider doesn't shine a bright light on them imo.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/networking/eliminatin...

speedgoose• 2 years ago

The likelihood of Google killing BigQuery or any of their other main cloud products anytime soon without a migration plan is low enough I assume.

lkdfjlkdfjlg2• 2 years ago

What I'd like to understand is what Google thought the end game was here.

g15jv2dp2• 2 years ago

Google is not a single person. Some manager or engineer at google thought, "how can I add the launch of a new product to my CV", cobbled this up, and someone in the hierarchy gave a green light. Six years later, someone else probably thought "this costs too much and doesn't improve the ad-money printing machine" so decided to shut it down.

danpalmer• 2 years ago

Or more charitably, someone thought "I wonder if users would like this feature", so shipped it to see, and then saw they didn't use it, so removed it to reduce complexity and move on to more important things.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but in my experience few are thinking just about their CV or promotions, and most product changes are driven (at least publicly, within the company) by a desire to improve offerings for users.

jarjoura• 2 years ago

Pretty sure a product at this scale that required several XFN teams to execute on was not dreamt up by a couple people wanting a promotion.

This was a product that was meant to drive some KPI metric of some large organization, and it was launched with the full intention to drive it for years. Then when it wasn't meeting some target, instead of steering the ship in the right direction, the directors or VPs who funded the effort likely got bored and moved on to the next KPI.

I'm sure a lot of folks at the bottom worked very hard on it and were proud of it and definitely deserved the praise on their performance reviews. However, once it lost its director or VP support, there would have been no way to keep it running.

lkdfjlkdfjlg2• 2 years ago

Did I say it's a single person? No. I said (implied) that it has an end game.

If you have no insight on Google internals, you really have nothing to reply to my question (as other's responses to your comment show).

Takennickname• 2 years ago

Another one bites the dust

LunaSea• 2 years ago

Wonder if this is linked with their introduction of IP protection, another VPN, within Google Chrome?

resolutebat• 2 years ago

That's a very limited purpose service to avoid tracking, it's not going to help you torrent all the warez.

https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/protections/ip...

okokwhatever• 2 years ago

Google googling Google things.

nolist_policy2• 2 years ago

Apparently they had all kind of problems with the Windows client. DNS hijacking, route injection, etc.

IMHO understandable that they didn't want to deal with the Windows mess.

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

Just having it as an Android feature would be pretty good. Millions of phones, all paying $5/month for these features.

Rinzler89• 2 years ago

Except Android users are not known for paying for things (for SW I mean).

xnx3• 2 years ago

Pixel VPN is available for all Pixel phones 7 and newer. I might even get a spare phone to use as a home VPN proxy.

g15jv2dp2• 2 years ago

A billion-dollar company cannot solve VPN on Windows? Please... The number and diversity of VPN offerings on Windows (including OSS ones) is a clear indication that that's not the issue.

johnnyanmac3• 2 years ago

Of course they can solve it if they wanted to. But those people were probably migrated to a more profitable team or laid off. We're in "number go up" mode now, not "market capure" mode.

pennybanks2• 2 years ago

i believe initially the vpn had something to do with google fi either integrated or a feature or something. so the vpn could be a leftover after they decided to go a different route, just a guess

DoItToMe81• 2 years ago

Every other VPN on the planet seems to have no such issue. This is very odd.

arvinsim• 2 years ago

Cost-benefit analysis probably showed that it's not worth it for them.

nolist_policy2• 2 years ago

I'm not convinced the other offerings are actually secure.

For example[1]:

However, if he controls the responsible DHCP server, he can simply command end devices to send their data past the VPN. To do this, it sends the DHCP option 121 with a corresponding route –, for example, to redirect all DNS queries. The VPN's own encryption is omitted, but the VPN connection is maintained so that the user is unaware of the attack.
Leviathan Security has reproduced the problem with Windows, Linux, iOS and MacOS – but the attack does not work with Android because Android ignores the DHCP option 121.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Tunnelvision-Attackers-can-bypa...

Beretta_Vexee• 2 years ago

I pay for Google One and the VPN was a bad joke from day one even on Android. It was absolutely unreliable, the connection was unavailable or cut randomly. The DNS used were random choice between those of Google and the ISP. This service was unusable even on the wifi in my flat.

It was a disaster when travelling, it was very hard to get it to work with hotel wifi or if there was a captive portal. There are different country lists for "You have access to the VPN service" and "You have access to the VPN service when travelling".

The service does not work in China. The service simply does not work in the majority of cases where it might be needed.

Google has made no effort to improve this service in several years, for their paying customers, on their mobile OS.

vsnf2• 2 years ago

I'm of two minds on Google's MO on products.

On one hand, I appreciate that they try all sorts of things and seem to have almost no hesitation with launching some things which are quirky or of niche usefulness.

On the other hand, the only things that have ever survived are Docs, GCP, and tenuously, Voice. I don't mind them launching and shutting down a lot of products, but it's really stunning just how few things actually make it.

buro9• 2 years ago

it's really stunning just how few things actually make it

which echoes my experience in the music industry, and what I've seen of VCs in tech, and small businesses in my town.

very, very, few things are successful, and even fewer of those are successful at the kind of scale that Google needs to ensure that they don't become a sprawling mess of millions of employees. they need very high margin high value products at high scale, supported by the fewest possible engineers (even if that number is still thousands or tens of thousands of engineers)... and the truth is, for that business model, very few things are possible, and that the understanding of what those things are is going to be the result of trial and error.

I'm almost completely de-Googled now, so these announcements affect me less and less as time passes, but I do understand why they do this, and it does make business sense

Lutger• 2 years ago

Right, a great number of companies would absolutely fly on the userbase of most of the apps on killedbygoogle. Some of these had hundreds of millions of users when google turned off the lights.

robertlagrant5• 2 years ago

Maps, Android, Earth, Translate, I guess?

What's odd about One is it seems such a small thing for them to do given all the things they already do. They already have a global network, so VPN makes sense. They already have a lot of cloud storage, and know how to run cloudy things. They already have the phones to put it on.

vsnf2• 2 years ago

Maps, Android, Earth, Translate, I guess?

This is fair, I shouldn't have omitted them. They do level the ratio of launches to shutdowns a bit. They slipped my mind because I personally never use of think of them, but they're definitely there.

ulfw2• 2 years ago

Half of those were bought, not built

FartinMowler• 2 years ago

For me, it's not so much the shutdown as it is the extremely short notice of the shutdown. At a BigCo I worked at, this would have missed the regular project funding cycle for 2024 and so would have to be done as an unplanned emergency project. Senior execs don't like emergencies ... and remember who caused them. Shutdowns should be given 2+ years notice!

abhayhegde2• 2 years ago

Hopefully many other important things by Google don't bite the dust. I extensively use Keep, Scholar, and Finance. I don't see if any of them make money for Google which is what seems like the only metric they care about anyway.

pennybanks2• 2 years ago

i disagree. im sure they have an idea about how much they will lose on constantly trying stuff out.

i always glad companies, people are willing to try, test, risk, create, things because thats how progression and innovation works. the more the merrier, the crazier the better.

ill never criticize people/companies/ceos that are willing to try/create new things but it seems like people are the opposite and are very quick to do so. but i get it.

abhayhegde2• 2 years ago

I didn't understand what you disagree with.

I'm glad companies create such useful tools. I'm just saying the prospect of continuation seems to be contingent on whether it's profitable (at least in the long run). Hopefully, Google doesn't take that approach with some of its products is all I'm saying.

ulfw2• 2 years ago

What's that silly company not shutting down? Does anyone even bother getting into Gemini? How long will it be around?

aranw2• 2 years ago

To be honest I don't think anyone will really care too much about Google killing a VPN product there's probably companies out there better suited to offer this as a service. I think the one that still bothers me and I think was a big mistake considering there cloud computing platform was Google Domains. Wasn't that profitable product and perfectly suited to be fully integrated into GCP?

Edit: As someone else has stated it's good that they try things and try different products and I think it's good that they shutdown products that they are not good at running

blitzar2• 2 years ago

allegedly squarespace paid $180mil for it and there were 10mil domains registerd through the service.

Even on googles scale that is a decent side hustle.

altdataseller3• 2 years ago

And i think in the long term, it is going to benefit consumers. Squarespace lives and breathes domains. Google doesnt.

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

I care. It's annoying that they're getting rid of this because I use it so my company can't spy on my Internet browsing.

tanseydavid• 2 years ago

> I use it so my company can't spy on my Internet browsing

That's what CoPilot Recall is all about -- we'll just take screenshots every 5 seconds.

worldwidelies• 2 years ago

Had no idea Google had a VPN. I don’t know why anyone would use it. As if their other data gathering methods weren’t enough. Imagine funneling all of your internet traffic through them.

nalekberov4• 2 years ago

Most people think of VPN as a magic tool to be completely anonymous on the internet.

fellerts2• 2 years ago

Can you fault them when that's what NordVPN and others claim in their YouTube ads?

Tom Scott said it better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

ignoramous2• 2 years ago

For the same reason Apple operates Private Relay. Google also cares a tonne about state censorship blocking access to its web services.

A refresher: Google runs world's largest public DNS resolver, builds a browser used by 3b+, and an OS by 2b+. If they need to harvest data, they most certainly don't need a VPN (and may be that's why they killed it).

Veliladon• 2 years ago

I don’t think that’s the answer. I don’t know about Google One but iCloud Private Relay doesn’t work in China straight up. You get a message saying it’s not allowed in the territory.

chatmasta• 2 years ago

Apple doesn’t operate Private Relay, and in fact that’s kind of the point: nodes are operated by three separate entities (Cloudflare, Fastly and Akamai IIRC). And the protocol is designed such that no entity can link your identity to your traffic. It’s actually quite cool and worth reading more about if you aren’t familiar with it.

marvinblum• 2 years ago

Well, I mean, Google is planning that for all Chrome users:

https://github.com/GoogleChrome/ip-protection

unixhero• 2 years ago

Unserious. I can't rely on any new thing from G-daddy any more.

PunchTornado3• 2 years ago

https://killedbymicrosoft.info/

163 services killed by Microsoft. But they still didn't manage to kill Internet Explorer.

I don't know why Google gets the hate for killing things.

nalekberov4• 2 years ago

293 vs 163. Microsoft was founded in 1975, Google in 1998. Extreme greed over Principles. Also this: https://openrss.org/blog/how-google-helped-destroy-adoption-...

LeonidasXIV• 2 years ago

It lists Internet Explorer right there?

PunchTornado3• 2 years ago

still getting hits from IE users on my site. 69.71 million people around the world used Internet Explorer to access the web in 2021.

deely32• 2 years ago

Personally I feel like Google kills are more brutal and abrupt. For example MS killed Movie Maker, but you can still use it if you have it installed. Google killed service - and there nothing you can do with it.

jrhey• 2 years ago

How many years from now will Gmail be on that chopping block?

“We’re shutting down Gmail, here’s an export of your inbox. We promise to forward your email for 5 years.”

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Makes me nervous what happens to my accounts/subscriptions tied to my Gmail address.

deely32• 2 years ago

We promise to forward your email for 5 years.”

More like 18 months.

datadeft• 2 years ago

Daily reminder that Google is an ad tech company. Everything they do is financed by ads. If the service is not relevant to ads it is going to be shut down eventually.

gigapotential2• 2 years ago

If you're looking for VPN alternatives checkout https://UpVPN.app

Alifatisk3• 2 years ago

You forgot to mention that you’re behind the product

gigapotential2• 2 years ago

I'd say front and center

asim• 2 years ago

They are ruthless and actually that's probably a good thing. At the scale they operate it's more obvious and affects many more users but if a product is not working e.g not reaching Google scale, then you gotta kill it. Maintaining it just to save face isn't the answer. Doesn't stop it being really annoying when largely everything is deprecated on Google Cloud or they kill your favourite niche product but I'm still a big google search and gmail user.

walteweiss• 2 years ago

Yeah, very good. They created a situation when you simply cannot trust them on any product they have. A calendar, do you use it today? What if they’ll kill it tomorrow?

mulmen• 2 years ago

In what way is it good?

azangru• 2 years ago

Avoiding sunk cost fallacy? I.e. if their metrics show that a certain service is a net loss for them, they kill it? At least I hope that's their reasoning and data.

Gigachad• 2 years ago

Which is why I just don’t bother integrating any Google products in to my life. They throw random shit at the wall and most of it won’t last a year.

lenkite• 2 years ago

If they want to be ruthless, they should also highlight this bold and center at product launch in any Terms & Conditions.

    This product will be deprecated and shutdown in the future if it doesn't consistently bring in $X billion within $Y quarters and within $Z operating cost. Kindly use at your own risk.

gadders• 2 years ago

Move fast and break things. Customer good will mainly.

ngrilly• 2 years ago

I used to think the “killed by Google” meme was exaggerated, but this doesn’t look good. Why go through all the trouble of developing and promoting a VPN service as part of Google One, to eventually shut it down? If Apple is able to do it as part of iCloud, then why not Google? It’s like Google is launching new products without any strategic thinking, to eventually realize the product is not a good fit for them, after having wasted their own resources, and more importantly the time and attention of their customers. Google is slowly but surely destroying their brand. Which is kind of sad.

robingchan• 2 years ago

I have Google One VPN which comes with the storage, I don't use it. If I were going to use a VPN I'd probably use a different provider even though I have the free access of one.

I think it's because of trust - I'm nervous about the fact it's linked to my Google account. Using a separate provider with a virtual credit card and an Apple email relay would be my choice.

SXX2• 2 years ago

This really show how Google One subscriptions are useless:

* AI features introduced on special plan so f you if paid for yearly 2TB plan.

* Features like VPN being removed at will.

It's not like their VPN was all that useful due to absolutely unreliability, but if it was working properly I would certainly find some use for it.

Alifatisk3• 2 years ago

And I guess my Google One subscription will keep costing the same?

glimshe• 2 years ago

The Google One VPN was a silly product all along, given that one of the advantages of using a VPN is to protect yourself from Google's tracking (assumes one doesn't use Chrome)

Google to shut down Google One VPN on June 20

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