- Google One (2TB) subscription loses two major features in the UK
- Subscribers will soon have to pay for Google Home Premium separately
- Fitbit Premium also disappears from the subscription on October 1, 2026
Google Home gets a big Gemini-driven upgrade, but that change does not come without a few damage and price increases.
Early Gemini for home testers (those who signed up for early access) are now getting the new features, but Google has given me some a little worse news. As a Google One subscriber in England, I currently get Google Home Premium and Fitbit Premium as part of my subscription but not long.
In an e email sent to me and other Google One subscribers (below), Google says “These benefits will no longer be offered with your Premium plan with effect from October 1, 2026”. This means that in order to keep the existing benefits of my Nest-Cam (not to get all the gemi-driven benefits that will come soon), I will soon have to upgrade to a much more expensive Google AI Pro plan.
To convince me and others in the UK to shut down our pitchforks, Google has offered us a cut-price AI Pro Deal for the next year. We can get a 50% discount in the next 12 months and take its price down from £ 18.99 per Month (it’s currently $ 19.99 / AU $ 32.99 per month in the US and Australia) to £ 9.49 a month.
Unfortunately, it is still significantly more than my current £ 79.99 a year (which acts as £ 6.67 a month). And after the reduced first year, the subscription will be almost three times what I currently pay.
As a person who recently started a YouTube -Premium subscription, it’s hard to swallow (and frankly, justify). As I live in the UK, I also don’t get any Gemini for home camera features until the beginning of 2026 anyway. So the clock is ticking on my Nest Cam’s useful expanded video story and ‘well -known faces’ forces, and I’ll probably be looking for a subscription -free alternative soon.
The last smart home straw
As my colleague Lance Ulanoff (Techradar’s editor as a whole) recently wrote, tech subscriptions become a large bugbear. I’m pretty tired of them, but it’s especially bad in the smart home.
Buying Smart Home Tech in the last decade has felt like playing a constant game of bait-and-switching, followed by the sting of award hole. Most smart home devices I’ve owned (from Tado to Canary and more) have switched to a subscription policy that wasn’t there from the start.
I do not have a problem with subscriptions that adds add-in, but they should not be used to ring-fence basic functionality. My Nest Cam, for example, is largely useless without subscription because you only get the last three hours of footage in your event history.
Combine this with the fact that Google is not launching its new 3rd Nest -Drybell in the UK – and even limiting the fun colors for its incoming home speaker to the United States – and I’m starting to feel like a very unwelcome guest in Google’s Smart Home.
In fact, I can retire from Google Hardware in general considering its tendency to suddenly kick projects into Google Graveyard when it is distracted by the next shining innovation.
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