Google’s subscription service Google One has hit a major growth milestone, reaching over 100 million paying subscribers globally. This achievement was announced on February 10, 2023, by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, marking a significant step for the company’s subscription business.

Launched in 2018, Google One is an upgrade from Google’s free storage plans, offering expanded cloud storage across Gmail, Drive and Photos. The base plan starts at $1.99 per month in the US for 100GB of storage, with options up to 2TB for $9.99 per month.

In addition to extra storage, Google One subscribers gain access to extra features and benefits, like the ability to add family members to share the storage quota, premium customer support and bonus features such as a VPN service and discounts on Google products.

Reaching over 100 million subscribers underscores the appeal of these extras for Google customers. It also shows Google’s success in upselling customers from free to paid plans by placing limits on free storage and emphasizing the perks of going premium.

For example, in 2021 Google ended unlimited high-quality photo backups for non-paying users, restricting free accounts to just 15GB across Drive, Gmail and Photos. For avid Google service users, upgrading to a paid Google One plan became a necessity to get more room for photos, videos, documents and email storage.

Google One’s growth mirrors the impressive rise of YouTube’s Premium subscription service for ad-free viewing, which also recently celebrated hitting over 100 million paid members.

Premium subscriptions are becoming increasingly important revenue streams for Google and its parent company Alphabet. As ads face economic headwinds, recurring subscription fees provide more stability.

Reaching the 100 million subscribers mark with Google One gives the company growing clout in the cloud storage market dominated by Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive. It also sets Google up to push subscriptions further, evidenced by this week’s launch of an “AI” enhanced version of Google One costing $19.99 per month.

As Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated, hitting 100 million subscribers with Google One so quickly after achieving the same milestone with YouTube Premium shows the value of products people can use across Google. With subscriptions emerging as a top priority, expect even more focus on converting Google’s billions of free users into paying members.