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Google Relents: Legacy G Suite Users Will Be Able To Migrate To Free Accounts (arstechnica.com) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the under-pressure dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There is hope for users of Google's "legacy" free G Suite accounts. Last week, Google announced a brutal policy change -- it would shut down the Google Apps accounts of users who signed up during the first several years when the service was available for free. Users who had a free G Suite account were given two options: start paying the per-user monthly fee by July 2022 or lose your account. Naturally, this move led to a huge outcry outside (and apparently inside) Google, and now, the company seems to be backing down from most of the harsher terms of the initial announcement. First, Google is launching a survey of affected G Suite users -- apparently, the company is surprised by how many people this change affected. Second, it's promising a data-migration option (including your content purchases) to a consumer account before the shutdown hits.

The support page detailing the shutdown has quietly been updated (for some reason, Google is not making a big deal of the changes yet). First, if (and only if) you're signed in with a free G Suite account, you'll see a link to this survey, which is aimed at free G Suite admins with 10 users or fewer using the service for "non-business" purposes. Google says users filling out the survey will receive "updates on more options for your non-business legacy account in the coming months." It's a sign that Google had no idea how many people this change would affect, and now, the company wants to hear from you.

The ideal situation, if the custom domain option has to shut down, would be the option to port your free G Suite account to a consumer Google account, with all the purchases, data, email, and other features intact. You would naturally have to pick a new account name and email address, but minimal disruption to other services would seem like the least Google could do, and it sounds like the company is building something like that. There's now a new section on the support page titled: "If I don't want to upgrade to a paid subscription, can I transfer my data?" [...] This is the option everyone has been asking for, as it specifically references "non-Google Workspace paid content," which presumably would mean all your app, game, and media purchases made through Google Play and YouTube. The support article doesn't offer any additional details yet, only saying to wait for further updates, but Google promises the option will be ready before July, which is when the account disruptions start happening.
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Google Relents: Legacy G Suite Users Will Be Able To Migrate To Free Accounts More

Google Relents: Legacy G Suite Users Will Be Able To Migrate To Free Accounts

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  • Family accounts (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m0gely ( 1554053 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @06:26PM (#62213499)
    I got a Legacy account for my family. My kids are now college age and heavily use the different Google services. I hope they have some option to continue for personal use that's less expensive than business. Microsoft has something like this for Office that lets a family share a slightly more expensive license than the single license. It's a bummer because it was no-cost for so long I guess I let my guard down knowing the free lunch could be over any time. Not saying there isn't value but for larger households this adds up.
  • Subscription software is a thing in the same way leasing a car is a thing. Its unlikely that I will ever engage in either, but I dont think the practice should be banned. Sure, one can argue that there are "services" involved here, but be real about the price tag vs the actual services (vs the software) rendered. An email account or some such.. synching this and that... look at that price tag again.

  • Been screwing G Suite early adopters for years (Score:3)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @06:43PM (#62213567) Journal

    This whole thing has been an absolute cluster fuck, since almost the beginning. Google heavily encouraged us to buy into this ecosystem. They told us it was great for power users who were managing their own personal domain. They got us locked into it.

    Then they keep shitting all over us. Want to use your G Suite account for YouTube Premium? Sure, but you don't get many features that you're paying for, such as family sharing. Same with YouTube TV. Other things like Nest devices just flat out don't work. Bought a Google Home? Don't expect most of the features to work. Calendar sharing, forget about it.

    The whole situation has sucked, for years. That was a big lesson on how Google treats their most loyal customers, and a big reason why I don't have an Android any more and why my G Suite account is only for email now.

  • Glad I have a permanent address (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @06:48PM (#62213577)

    I am fortunate that one of my former schools has let people keep their address permanently as a forward, and was doing that way back in the 90s. So that address is what I've been using for almost 30 years - the forward address I point it at has changed multiple times, of course.

    Even when I was using gmail for my personal mail, I tried not to tell people the gmail address - I just gave them the long-term one. This made moving off of Gmail pretty painless. It also means that the only thing that ever gets sent to that Gmail address is spam.

    • Your address is only permanent till the provider decides to stop offering it. 30 years is good going, doesn't guarantee you'll get 31. If it's free you can get screwed over at any time (not necessarily maliciously).

      In fact being free isn't the issue, reminds me of my last home internet deal, it was fixed price contract for 2 years, but after 9 months they decided to put it up (they just changed the terms so it wasn't fixed priced any more).

      You can't take anything for granted, even when you have a contract!

  • How to keep using your domain with Gmail for free (Score:5, Informative)

    by quenda ( 644621 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:15PM (#62213693)

    Many domain-name registers, e.g. namecheap, include free DNS hosting and email forwarding.
    So you can forward multiple addresses like "me@mydomain.com" to "my.name.123xyz@gmail.com".

    Then you need to configure the new consumer Gmail account to use your old address as an alias for outgoing mail.
    https://support.google.com/mai... [google.com]

    Not ideal, but easier / cheaper than setting up a new email hosting service and learning how to use it.

    • Mod parent up. This is useful information and may be what I wind up doing. Thanks, quenda.

    • Thanks for the tip.

      Hey Google! I am not going to get suckered into any more "FREE" Google services if you start charging me for Free G Suite.

    • Re:How to keep using your domain with Gmail for fr (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Friday January 28, 2022 @06:05AM (#62214557)

      As someone who has been doing this for a couple of years, there are a few things you need to be aware of:

      1. If you don't configure GMail to use an external SMTP when sending your emails then email to Outlook users will show "on behalf of" and your GMail address. To avoid this, configure GMail to send email through an external SMTP server and then put in GMail's own SMTP details and your GMail username and password. You'll also need to enable insecure connections and you may be asked to authenticate Gmail's own attempt to send mail.
      2. Google will occasionally send you an email to nag you to turn off insecure connections. Which you can't do because of the previous point.
      3. If you respond to a meeting invite, it will always come from your Gmail address - there is no way to change that.
      4. On iOS Mail, you need to set up the mail account with your Gmail address first and then change it to your vanity address. This will cause all emails to stop being sent, so you'll need to add a secondary SMTP server with your Gmail credentials. Sending an email will take slightly longer as iOS Mail first fails to authenticate with the primary SMTP but then sends the email on the secondary SMTP.
      5. Occasonally iOS Mail will tell you there is an authentication problem. If you retry, it goes away. I'm not sure if this is an iOS Mail problem, a GMail problem or a symptom of the way the emails are sent (see above point).
      6. There is a bug in GMail for iOS that means that hitting share and then the Gmail app will force you to send the email from your Gmail address. Hopefully Google will fix that one but I reported it six months ago now.

      Apart from that, it works pretty well. Certainly well enough not to spend $6 per user per month.

  • Created around 2008 and free. I'm not getting any notifications from Google to pay up nor am I getting any nags in the Admin Console. What gives?

    I primarily use this for e-mail, so I'll just do an IMAP migration to my own server if it comes down to it. I'm not paying Google a fucking thing per month nor am I switching to a service where I can't use my own domain name.

    • I finally got one about the upgrade 10 minutes ago. It's coming.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jwdb ( 526327 )

      Same, no emails for me either. However, if you go into the admin console, there's a pop-up message about the upgrade that shows up on the Subscriptions page.

      I was hoping I was exempt for some reason, but seems not.

    • Created around 2008 and free. I'm not getting any notifications from Google to pay up nor am I getting any nags in the Admin Console. What gives?

      Same here. I didn't get one until I logged into my administrative account and then it showed up as an email in my primary admin account. Maybe a coincidence, but probably aliens.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I haven't got the notice either. I think (but haven't seen any direct statement from Google confirming) that there are two categories of free G Suite accounts.

      I think there are some (including me) who were explicitly told "free forever" when they signed up. From memory this happened very early on in G Suite's life (called "Google for Domains" then maybe, when it was very much in "beta") when Google were very keen to get people on to beta test the product and the "free forever" was part of the reward for
  • Not your configuration, not your setting, definitely not your date, and obviously not your important data. End-to-end encryption is a myth, **if** it promised by the app provider. There are always possible side channels that can send dups of your data. If an app suit doesn't let your keep your data **locally, first**, and only sync what you when WHEN YOU CHOOSE to sync, it will (sooner or later) fail or fall prey to a scam.

  • This clusterfuck has revealed to a lot of people something very important: a critical service is dependent upon the ongoing goodwill and trustworthiness of a totally amoral company that operates on a business model designed by psychopaths.

    Leave. Now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      ^^ You're not wrong. The problem is finding a compatible/affordable ecosystem when you're already locked in.

  • Like a lot of folks, I host my email domain for my family on the legacy Gsuite. Google's pricing and packaging appears to assume Gsuite users are all business users. I primarily use the service for my email, but will use other services from time to time - sharing documents, using the calendar etc. It's not without value, but considering the only value added with the legacy Gsuite vs. a free gmail account, $6/mo/user is too steep. They should provide an option that aligns better to the 'family domain' use ca

    • This is just serving to drive users away.

      That's the point. You aren't paying them anything, but you are costing them. That is exactly the kind of "customer" a business wants to get rid of.

      • They have been harvesting and selling our data since the beginning. I believe the trade has been at the very least fair for them. Now they want their cake and want to eat it too? Pretty disrespectful of them really.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        What are you 'costing' them in excess of what they offer everyone else for free on @gmail.com? What are they not getting in terms of marketing data and ad impressions vs. a ordinary gmail account?

        As far as I can see nothing and nothing. In many ways having a vanity domain probably makes you all the more track able and all the more valuable in terms of the data collected. If its profitable for Google to give away @gmail address than it should be just as profitable to let they (relatively speaking) tiny gro

        • They are having to maintain something for free that they clearly don't want to. What is so hard for everyone to understand about this? Maybe it's just because I've been in the hosting business for so long, but I can really only see this from their point of view.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            Speaking as someone who has supported SAS offerings in the past; I don't understand WHAT they are maintaining is the point. G-Suite isn't going away, they don't have to do anything they are not doing for paid tier customers anyway in terms of development, support, systems, hosting etc.

            We are basically talking about a few records in a database here. If there were shutting G-suite down entirely or migrating the paying customers to some other platform or something I could see the argument.

            Admittedly I have no

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by YoTmax ( 9313461 )
              Granted I haven't given this a lot of thought, but the obvious ways Google makes money from accounts under one of these domains is: selling your information to partner companies, including things like location info all in support of their ad and user metrics business; providing ecosystem services like the Google Play store, apps, videos, books etc,; providing add-on storage services - you can pay for more email storage if you email address is under the custom domain - it's not like there are no add-on servi

  • Only those don't work so well anymore in the modern internet era, since people do have a rather loud voice now.

    But hopefully people will start looking into things they have control over now (I doubt it, but hey), instead of just trusting all their shit to Google/Microsoft/Apple/OtherCorporationThatDoesn'tGiveAFlyingFuckAboutYou.

  • Depending on how one counts users.

    I do occasionally run gmail to look at things, mostly from my phone when I'm away from my work and home desktops. I do pull all email out via IMAP and only keep the 30 days worth of stuff in the trash they clean automatically.

    Guess that makes me a user. I have a Google Voice number, but I can move it back to the non-G-suite account I first tied it to. I use Photos, but so can non-G-suite users.

    I have three or four family users with addresses @mydomain, but it is

  • I own several domains and I'll admit that I went a bit wild registering all of them for free G Suite accounts.
    I only care about 2, maybe 3. One's my personal domain and the other my business but I'm the only user on either.
    The 3rd I setup for my parents but now it's just my mum and she won't care if I change her email address.
    I don't use any of the apps I just use G Suite for email accounts.
    GMail is pretty good for spam filtering which is my only needed really.
    Now I'm thinking of moving to Apple's domain ho

  • "the company is surprised by how many people this change affected"
    I call bullshit on this.
    Google know EXACTLY how many free G Suite accounts there are, and they know EXACTLY how many are idle/abandoned and how many are currently in use.

    What surprised Google is that somehow people were pissed off at being told they had to start paying for something they've had for free for 10-15 years, and was touted as always being free when they first signed up. The only thing that surprises me about this is that Google cl

    • The only thing that surprises me about this is that Google claimed to be surprised by this reaction - anyone could have told them that this would happen.

      Exactly. This has always happened every time any "free" service has tried to extort the users who signed up when it was free. What blows me away is that shitty browser-based versions of real office software ever became so popular, compared to real office software running locally. Libre Office is free and Just Works. I guess these folks who use G Apps/G Suite live somewhere that broadband is ubiquitous, reliable and cheap. That must be nice, but it's still a shame to waste that bandwidth.

  • After many years as a free Google Apps for Domains user I moved my domain over to iCloud today. As I was using Mail.app on macOS and iOS anyway it wasn't a big upset. No longer free but ¥130 / month buys me more storage than I need.

    Transferring the domain and 3 GB of mail data from a Google Takeout was pretty straightforward.

  • I have 400+ logins associated with that email. It's disastrous to have to painstakingly update each one - if they even allow it.
    I am basically forced to lose 16 years of digital life or pay the extortion.
    I only have 2 emails & don't need any of the business stuff.

    In a single wave of the wrist they have turned 1000's of happily supportive Legacy users into anti-google zealots.

    Ive spent most of today switching all my devices to Firefox & DuckDuckGo.

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