Yeah, the hotel benefits creep me out. At first glance, it’s an iCloud-like storage plan, fine. But reading more and finding the hotel benefits makes me think “oh right, Google wants to track everything I do online and offline and sell my info to advertisers.”
Yep it creates a direct connection between a cloud service and what you type in Google search box. That... seems strange. It make it sound like a repository for all of your data/activity on all Google services not just, you know, the data you upload to their cloud service.
Maybe they try to move toward aAmazon Prime-Style "one subsription to feed all your live-areas"-Service. Next time they might add pLay store-flatrates for books, video, music, apps and then combine it with youtube premium.
My guess would be a slow introduction of concierge type services linked into their phone AI thing that they launched 6 months ago to great fanfair, and a general move from software service companies (and my bank.) into offering concierge type services in general.
Banks have been doing concierge for ages, if you're at a "expensive enough" level (and it's not as expensive as one first might assume, my bank offers a full concierge service for 10 000€ / year that's basically "it's 2 am and you want something specific and you're wherever, call this number and we'll find it for you").
I don't think tech companies can compete with that; if you want a concierge on retainer you want a guy you can talk to and explain your weird request. Nobody is paying 10+k a month to get a "barely close enough" answer. I also don't believe that's what they aim.
Instead they intend to go for the "fake concierge, but close enough": tie-ins into all their sub products, in an unified subscription and interface, at a small fraction of the cost. Oh you want an hotel ? We have that. Renting a car ? Buying a musical instrument ? Make a reservation at a restaurant ? Done. Oh, you want that actually unique request that does not get enough volume by month to be a business on its own ? No, we don't do that, but here is the google search results for it.
In other words, I believe Google One aims to play in the same court as Amazon Prime.
Founder’s Club is a good example of the mid-tier concierge services, as it exists exclusively to provide concierge-like discounts for a specific demographic target at a significant enough to overcome the “not enough volume” concern that banks face.
These discount services have one critical weakness for most of us: you must spend at least 10x the membership fee each year on compatible services to benefit from the discounts. If you don’t spend at least $2000/year on eligble costs, paying $200/year for discounts rarely makes any sense once you add up the money saved.
Credit cards try to democratize through “points” but the same math applies when comparing to a debit card.
