Google One cloud storage service has nearly 100M subscribers, Google One Plans start at $1.99 a month and include access to its VPN service in the United States.
According to Google CEO Sudar Pichai, the company is “just about to cross” 100 million users of the company’s Google One cloud storage service.
Pichai mentioned that the company is seeking to expand the Google One service with more AI-powered capabilities during Alphabet’s Q4 2023 earnings call. 2018, the search engine behemoth debuted Google One. Since then, the product has changed and gained additional capabilities, such as the ability to edit Google Photos with features like color pop, sky suggestion, magic eraser, and portrait light and blur.
Google One Plans start at $1.99 a month and include access to its VPN service in the United States along with 100GB of storage that can be shared with five users.
Related: AI-Powered iOS 18 May Be the Biggest Update in Apple’s History
Pichai stated that Google’s whole subscription business, which includes Google One, YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and Music, is growing and has generated over $15 billion in revenue annually. According to the corporation, this represents a five-fold increase over 2019. Additionally, it stated that the “Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices” segment has grown by 23% year over year due to the robust subscription performance.
Google last stated in November 2022 that 80 million people were using YouTube’s premium services. However, since then, there hasn’t been a new update. According to the firm, there are 2 billion monthly active users who watch YouTube Shorts, and there are 7 billion plays per day. These figures are consistent with what Google reported for the third quarter of 2023.
Related: Google Chrome to Get Generative AI Features
About a thousand workers from Google’s hardware, engineering, and services divisions as well as 100 staff from YouTube were let go earlier this month. Subsequently, Pichai informed the employees via an internal message that this year will see further job losses.
Notably, Google stated that it employed 182,502 people in its results statement—a small increase over the 182,381 people it disclosed in its Q3 earnings release. Its current workforce of 190,234 is notably smaller than that at the end of 2022.
Despite an 11% gain from the previous year, Google’s $65.5 billion in ad income fell short of analyst projections of $65.8 billion. This miss caused a 4% decline in the company’s shares.
