Google is dropping its VPN (or virtual private network) from Google One, the company’s paid cloud storage service. The tech giant ditched its privacy tool because “people simply weren’t using it,” the company said in a statement to Quartz, and it’s focusing on “more in-demand features” — implying, of course, AI.
VPNs encrypt internet users’ online activity, giving them a secure way to browse the web and making it harder for internet service providers to sell their data to the highest bidder. While VPNs have been traditionally used for people to access websites or media that are unavailable in their country, they’ve become increasingly important as people become more concerned about their online privacy.
As Google’s VPN is phased out on Google One for iPhone and computer users, Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 8 smartphones will still have access to a VPN provided by Google, and the company noted there are many VPN services available on its Play Store.
Ditching its VPN on Google One is part of the company’s broader shift toward all things AI. At its annual Google Next conference in Las Vegas this week, the tech giant announced a range of new AI offerings, including a live-image generator, video editor, and new features for its chatbot Gemini. Google is taking steps to implement data security and privacy features on its AI tools, though, this week launching a new AI security add-on.
Google’s VPN is headed to what’s been dubbed the Google graveyard, a wasteland of now-deceased Google products that have been killed off as the company invests in AI software and hardware. Among others, digital payments system Google Pay, Google’s cache feature, and 17 Google Assistant tools lay in graves next to the plot now occupied by the VPN.
The VPN news ironically comes just a week after Google settled a privacy debacle over its incognito mode on Chrome. The company was accused of misleading customers into thinking its web browser’s incognito, or private browsing, function was actually private, and that their data wasn’t being traced by Google. But Google was, indeed, collecting users’ data, using it to measure web traffic and sell advertisements.
Google agreed last week to delete “billions of data records” associated with users’ private (or so they thought) browsing history, settling a class action lawsuit from 2020.