Google One is a cloud storage subscription service that gives you more space for your email, photos, and other documents and files. It expands the storage you get for free when you create a Google Account, with plans ranging from 100GB to 2TB of storage that you can share with up to five family members.

Google One increases the amount of cloud storage available to your Google Account. When you sign up for a Google Account, you get access to Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, and other apps, all of which draw from the same shared pool of cloud storage. Every email attachment you receive, every file you upload to Google Drive, and every photo you upload or sync with Google Photos takes up a portion of your cloud storage.

Your Google Account starts you off with a small amount of free storage, and once it's full, you'll no longer be able to receive emails or upload files to Drive or Photos unless you delete files to free up space. Google One is an alternative to the time-consuming and inconvenient process of regularly backing up your files locally and deleting them from cloud storage, as it gives you a significantly larger amount of storage in exchange for an ongoing monthly fee.

When you sign up for Google One, your cloud storage limit increases to 100GB for the basic plan, with other options going up to 30TB. This expanded pool of cloud data is shared across all of your Google services and apps, so you can receive more email attachments, upload more photos, store additional backup data from your phone, and more.